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diff --git a/20127.txt b/20127.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d61c0a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/20127.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6561 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Here are Ladies, by James Stephens + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Here are Ladies + +Author: James Stephens + +Release Date: December 19, 2006 [EBook #20127] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HERE ARE LADIES *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + +HERE ARE LADIES + + +BY + +JAMES STEPHENS + + +AUTHOR OF 'THE CROCK OF GOLD' + + + + +NEW YORK + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + +1914 + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1913 + +THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + + +Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913 + +Reprinted March, 1914. + + + + + CONTENTS + + + WOMEN + THREE HEAVY HUSBANDS + A GLASS OF BEER + ONE AND ONE + THREE WOMEN WHO WEPT + THE TRIANGLE + THE DAISIES + THREE ANGRY PEOPLE + THE THREEPENNY PIECE + BRIGID + THREE YOUNG WIVES + THE HORSES + MISTRESS QUIET EYES + THREE LOVERS WHO LOST + THE BLIND MAN + SWEET-APPLE + THREE HAPPY PLACES + THE MOON + THERE IS A TAVERN IN THE TOWN + + + + +HERE ARE LADIES + + + WOMEN + + Listen! If but women were + Half as kind as they are fair + There would be an end to all + Miseries that do appal. + + Cloud and wind would fly together + In a dance of sunny weather, + And the happy trees would throw + Gifts to travellers below. + + Then the lion, meek and mild, + With the lamb would, side by side, + Couch him friendly, and would be + Innocent of enmity. + + Then the Frozen Pole would go, + Shaking off his fields of snow, + To a kinder clime and dance + Warmly with the girls of France. + + These; if women only were + Half as kind as they are fair. + + + + +THREE HEAVY HUSBANDS + +I + +He had a high nose. He looked at one over the collar, so to speak. +His regard was very assured, and his speech was that short bundle of +monosyllables which the subaltern throws at the orderly. He had never +been questioned, and, the precedent being absent, he had never +questioned himself. Why should he? We live by question and answer, +but we do not know the reply to anything until a puzzled comrade +bothers us and initiates that divine curiosity which both humbles and +uplifts us. + +He wanted all things for himself. What he owned he wished to own +completely. He would give anything away with the largest generosity, +but he would share with no one-- + +"Whatever is mine," said he, "must be entirely mine. If it is alive I +claim its duty to the last respiration of its breath, and if it is dead +I cannot permit a mortgage on it. Have you a claim on anything +belonging to me? then you may have it entirely, I must have all of it +or none." + +He was a stockbroker, and, by the methods peculiar to that mysterious +profession, he had captured a sufficiency of money to enable him to +regard the future with calmness and his fellow-creatures with +condescension--perhaps the happiest state to which a certain humanity +can attain. + +So far matters were in order. There remained nothing to round his life +into the complete, harmonious circle except a wife; but as a stated +income has the choice of a large supply, he shortly discovered a lady +whose qualifications were such as would ornament any, however exalted, +position--She was sound in wind and limb. She spoke grammar with the +utmost precision, and she could play the piano with such skill that it +was difficult to explain why she played it badly. + +This also was satisfactory, and if the world had been made of machinery +he would have had the fee-simple of happiness. But to both happiness +and misery there follows the inevitable second act, and beyond that, +and to infinity, action and interaction, involution and evolution, +forging change for ever. Thus he failed to take into consideration +that the lady was alive, that she had a head on her shoulders which was +native to her body, and that she could not be aggregated as chattel +property for any longer period than she agreed to. + +After their marriage he discovered that she had dislikes which did not +always coincide with his, and appreciations which set his teeth on +edge. A wife in the house is a critic on the hearth--this truth was +daily and unpleasantly impressed upon him: but, of course, every man +knows that every woman is a fool, and a tolerant smile is the only +recognition we allow to their whims. God made them as they are--we +grin, and bear it. + +His wife found that the gospel of her husband was this--Love me to the +exclusion of all human creatures. Believe in me even when I am in the +wrong. Women should be seen and not heard. When you want excitement +make a fuss of your husband.--But while he entirely forgot that his +wife had been bought and paid for, she did not forget it: indeed, she +could not help remembering it. A wrong had been done her not to be +obscured even by economics, the great obscurer. She had been won and +not wooed. (The very beasts have their privileges!) She had been +defrauded of how many teasing and provoking prerogatives, aloofnesses, +and surrenders, and her body, if not her mind, resented and remembered +it. + +There are times when calmness is not recognised as a virtue. Of +course, he had wooed her in a way. He took her to the opera, he gave +her jewels, he went to Church with her twice every Sunday, and once a +month he knelt beside her in more profound reverences: sometimes he +petted her, always he was polite-- + +But he had not told her that her eyes were the most wonderful and +inspiring orbs into which a tired man could look. He never said that +there would not be much to choose between good and evil if he lost her. +He never said that one touch of her lips would electrify a paralytic +into an acrobat. He never swore that he would commit suicide and dive +to deep perdition if she threw him over--none of these things. It is +possible that she did not wish him to say or do such extravagances, but +he had not played the game, and, knowing that something was badly +wrong, she nursed a grievance, that horrid fosterling. + +He was fiercely jealous, not of his love, but of his property, and +while he was delighted to observe that other men approved of his taste, +he could not bear that his wife should admire these outsiders. This +was his attitude to her: Give me your admirations, all of them, every +note of exclamation of which you are mistress, every jot and tittle of +your thoughts must be mine, for, lacking these, I have nothing. I am +good to you. I have interposed between you and the buffets of +existence. I temper all winds to the bloom of your cheek. Do you your +part, and so we will be happy. + +There was a clerk in his office, a black-haired, slim, frowning young +man, who could talk like a cascade for ten minutes and be silent for a +month: he was a very angry young man, with many hatreds and many +ambitions. His employer prized him as a reliable and capable worker, +liked his manners, and paid him thirty-five shillings per week--Outside +of these matters the young man abode no more in his remembrance than +did the flower on the heath or the bird on the tree. + +It happened one day that the employer fell sick of influenza and was +confined to his bed. This clerk, by order, waited on him to see to his +correspondence; for, no matter who sneezes, work must be attended to. + +The young man stayed in the house for a week, and during his sojourn +there he met the lady. She fair, young, brooding! he also young, +silent, and angry! After the first look had passed between them, there +was little more to be said. They came together as though they had been +magnetised. Love or passion, by whatever name it is called, was born +abruptly. There is a force in human relations drawing too imperatively +for denial; defying self-interest, and dragging at all anchors of duty +and religion. Is it in man only the satisfaction of self? Egotism +standing like a mountain, and demanding, "Give me yourself or I will +kill myself." And women! is their love the degradation of self, the +surrender and very abasement of lowliness? or is it also egotism set on +a pinnacle, so careless and self-assured as to be fearful of nothing? +In their eyes the third person, a shadow already, counted as less than +a shadow. He was a name with no significance, a something without a +locality. His certain and particular income per annum was a thing to +laugh at . . . there was a hot, a swift voice speaking--"I love you," +it said, "I love you": he would batter his way into heaven, he would +tear delight from wherever delight might be--or else, and this was +harder, a trembling man pleading, "Aid me or I perish," and it is +woman's instinct not to let a man perish. "If I help you, I hurt +myself," she sighed; and, "Hurt yourself, then," sighed the man; "would +you have me perish. . .?" + +So the owner by purchase smiled-- + +"You are mine," said he, "altogether mine, no one else has a lien upon +you. When the weather is fine I will take you for drives in the +sunshine. In the nights we will go to the opera, hearkening together +to the tenor telling his sweet romanza, and when the wintry rain beats +on the windows you will play the piano for me, and so we will be happy." + +When he was quite recovered he went back to his office, and found that +one of his clerks had not arrived--this angered him; when he returned +home again in the evening, he found that his wife was not there. So +things go. + + +II + +He was one of those who shy at the _tete-a-tete_ life which, for a long +time, matrimony demands. As his wedding-day approached he grew fearful +of the prolonged conversation which would stretch from the day of +marriage, down the interminable vistas, to his death, and, more and +more, he became doubtful of his ability to cope with, or his endurance +to withstand, the extraordinary debate called marriage. + +He was naturally a silent man. He did not dislike conversation if it +was kept within decent limits: indeed, he responded to it contentedly +enough, but when he had spoken or been addressed for more than an hour +he became, first, impatient, then bored, and, finally, sulky or +ill-mannered.--"With men," said he, "one can talk or be silent as one +wishes, for between them there is a community of understanding which +turns the occasional silence into a pregnant and fruitful interlude +wherein a thought may keep itself warm until it is wanted: but with a +woman!"--he could not pursue that speculation further, for his +acquaintance with the sex was limited. + +In every other respect his bride was a happiness. Her good looks +soothed and pleased him. The touch of her hand gave him an +extraordinary pleasure which concealed within it a yet more +extraordinary excitement. Her voice, as a mere sound, enchanted him. +It rippled and flowed, deepened and tinkled. It cooed and sang to him +at times like the soft ringdove calling to its mate, and, at times +again, it gurgled and piped like a thrush happy in the sunlight. The +infinite variation of her tone astonished and delighted him, and if it +could have remained something as dexterous and impersonal as a wind he +would have been content to listen to it for ever--but, could he give +her pipe for pipe? Would the rich gurgle or the soft coo sound at last +as a horrid iteration, a mere clamour to which he must not only give an +obedient heed, but must even answer from a head wherein silence had so +peacefully brooded? + +His mind was severe, his utterance staccato, and he had no knowledge of +those conversational arts whereby nouns and verbs are amazingly +transfigured into a gracious frolic or an intellectual pleasure. To +snatch the chatter from its holder, toss and keep it playing in the air +until another snatched it from him; to pluck a theory hot from the +stating, and expand it until it was as iridescent and, perhaps, as thin +as a soap-bubble: to light up and vivify a weighty conversation until +the majestic thing sparkled and glanced like a jewel--these things he +could not do, and he knew it. Many a time he had sat, amazed as at an +exhibition of acrobatics, while around him the chatter burst and sang +and shone. He had tried to bear his part, but had never been able to +edge more than one word into that tossing cataract, and so he fell to +the habit of listening instead of speaking. + +With some reservations, he enjoyed listening, but particularly he +enjoyed listening to his own thoughts as they trod slowly, but very +certainly, to foregone conclusions. Into the silent arena of his mind +no impertinent chatter could burst with a mouthful of puns or ridicule, +or a reminiscence caught on the wing and hurled apropos to the very +centre of discussion. His own means of conveying or gathering +information was that whereby one person asked a question and another +person answered it, and, if the subject proved deeper than the +assembled profundity, then one pulled out the proper volume of an +encyclopaedia, and the pearl was elicited as with a pin. + +Meanwhile, his perturbation was real. There are people to whom we need +not talk--let them pass: we overlook or smile distantly at the +wretches, retaining our reputation abroad and our self-respect in its +sanctuary: but there are others with whom we may not be silent, and +into this latter category a wife enters with assured emphasis. He +foresaw endless opportunities for that familiar discussion to which he +was a stranger. There were breakfast-tables, dinner-tables, +tea-tables, and, between these, there might be introduced those +preposterous other tables which women invent for no purpose unless it +be that of making talk. His own breakfast, dinner, and tea-tables had +been solitary ones, whereat he lounged with a newspaper propped against +a lamp, or a book resting one end against the sugar-bowl and the other +against his plate.--This quietude would be ravaged from him for ever, +and that tumult nothing could exorcise or impede. Further than these, +he foresaw an interminable drawing-room, long walks together, and +other, even more confidential and particular, sequestrations. + +After one has married a lady, what does one say to her? He could not +conceive any one saying anything beyond "Good-morning." Then the other +aspect arrested him, "What does a woman find to say to a man?" Perhaps +safety lay in this direction, for they were reputed notable and +tireless speakers to whom replies are not pressingly necessary. He +looked upon his sweetheart as from a distance, and tried to reconstruct +her recent conversations.--He was amazed at the little he could +remember. "I, I, I, we, we, we, this shop, that shop, Aunt Elsa, and +chocolates." She had mentioned all these things on the previous day, +but she did not seem to have said anything memorable about them, and, +so far as he could recollect, he had said nothing in reply but "Oh, +yes" and "To be sure!" Could he sustain a lifetime of small-talk on +these meagre responses? He saw in vision his most miserable +tea-table--a timid husband and a mad wife glaring down their noses at +plates. The picture leaped at him as from a cinematograph and appalled +him. . . . After a time they would not even dare to look at each +other. Hatred would crouch behind these figures, waiting for its chain +to be loosed! + +So he came to the knowledge that he, so soon to be a husband, had been +specially fashioned by nature to be a bachelor. For him safety lay in +solitude: others, less rigorously planned, might safely venture into +the haphazard, gregarious state of wedlock, but he not only could not, +but must not, do so, and he meditated an appeal to his bride to release +him from the contract. Several times the meditation almost became +audible, but always, just as he toppled on the surge of speech, the +dear lady loosed a torrent of irrelevancies which swirled him from all +anchorage, and left him at the last stranded so distantly from his +thought that he did not know how to find his way back to it. + +It would be too brutally direct to shatter information about silk at +one shilling the yard with a prayer for matrimonial freedom. The girl +would be shocked--he could see her--she would stare at him, and +suddenly grow red in the face and stammer; and he would be forced to +trail through a lengthy, precise explanation of this matter which was +not at all precise to himself. Furthermore, certain obscure emotions +rendered him unwilling to be sundered from this girl.--There was the +touch of her hand; more, the touch of her lips given bravely and with +ready modesty--a contact not lightly to be relinquished. He did not +believe he could ever weary of looking at her eyes: they were grey, +widely open, and of a kindness such as he could not disbelieve in; a +radiant cordiality, a soft, limpid goodwill; believing and trustful +eyes which held no guile when they looked at him: there were her +movements, her swiftness, spaciousness, her buoyant certainty: one +remembered her hair, her hands, the way she wore a frock, and a +strange, seductive something about the look of her shoe. + +The thing was not possible! It is the last and darkest insult to tell +the woman who loves you that you do not wish to marry her. Her +indignant curiosity may be appeased only by the excuse that you like +some other woman better, and although she may hate the explanation she +will understand it--but no less legitimate excuse than this may pass +sunderingly between a man and a woman. + +It lay, therefore, that he must amend his own hand, and, accordingly, +for the purpose of marital intercourse, he began a sad inquiry into the +nature of things. The world was so full of things: clouds and winds +and sewing machines, kings and brigands, hats and heads, flower-pots, +jam and public-houses--surely one could find a little to chat about at +any moment if one were not ambitiously particular. With inanimate +objects one could speak of shape and colour and usefulness. Animate +objects had, beside these, movements and aptitudes for eating and +drinking, playing and quarrelling. Artistic things were well or badly +executed, and were also capable of an inter-comparison which could not +but be interesting and lengthy.--These things could all be talked +about. There were positive and negative qualities attaching to +everything, and when the former was exhausted the latter could still be +profitably mined--"Order," said he, "subsists in everything, and even +conversation must be subject to laws capable of ascertainment." + +He carefully, and under the terms of badinage, approached other men, +inquiring how they bore themselves in the matrimonial dispute, and what +were the subjects usually spoken of in the intimacies of family life. +But from these people he received the smallest assistance.--Some were +ribald, some jocose, some so darkly explanatory that intelligence could +not peer through the mist or could only divine that these hated their +wives. One man held that all domestic matters should be left entirely +to the wife and that talking was a domestic matter. Another said that +the words "yes, no, and why" would safeguard a man through any +labyrinth, however tortuous. Another said that he always went out when +the wife began to speak; and yet another suggested that the only +possible basis for conversation was that of perpetual opposition, where +an affirmation was always countered by a denial, and the proving of the +case exercised both time and intelligence. + +As he sat in the train beside his wife the silence which he so dreaded +came upon them. Emptiness buzzed in his head. He sought diligently +for something to speak about--the characteristics of objects! There +were objects and to spare, but he could not say--"that window is +square, it is made of glass," or, "the roof of this carriage is flat, +it is made of wood." + +Suddenly his wife buried her face in her muff, and her shoulders were +convulsed. . . . + +Love and contrition possessed him on the instant. He eased his husky +throat, and the dreaded, interminable conversation began-- + +"What are you crying for, my dear?" said he. + +Her voice, smothered by the fur, replied-- + +"I am not crying, darling," said she, "I am only laughing." + + +III + +He got stiffly up from his seat before the fire-- + +"Be hanged," said he, "if I wait any longer for her. If she doesn't +please to come in before this hour let her stop out." He stared into +the fire for a few moments--"Let her go to Jericho," said he, and he +tramped up to bed. + +They had been married just six months, after, as he put it, the hardest +courtship a man ever undertook. She was more like a piece of +quicksilver than a girl. She was as uncertain as a spring wind, as +flighty as a ball of thistledown--"Doesn't know her own mind for ten +minutes together," he groaned. "Hasn't any mind at all," he'd think an +hour later. While, on the following day, it might be--"That woman is +too deep, she is dodging all round me, she is sticking her finger in my +eye. She treats me as if I wasn't there at one moment, and diddles me +as if I was Tom Fool the next--I'll get out of it." + +He had got out of it three or four times--halted her against a wall, +and, with a furious forefinger, wagged all her misdeeds in her face; +then, rating her up, down and round, he had prepared to march away +complacent and refreshed like Justice taking leave of a sinner, only to +find that if the jade wept he could not go away-- + +"Dash it all," said he, "you can't leave a girl squatting down against +a wall, with her head in her lap and she crying. Hang it," said he, +"you feel as if there was water round your legs and you'll splash if +you move." + +So he leavened justice with mercy, and, having dried her tears with his +lips, he found himself in the same position as before, with a mad +suspicion tattering through his brain that maybe he had been "diddled" +again. + +But he married her, and to do that was a job also. She shied at +matrimony. She shied at everything that looked plain or straight. She +was like a young dog out for a walk: when she met a side-street she +bolted down it and was instantly surrounded by adventure and misery, +returning, like the recovered pup, thick with the mud of those +excursions. There was a lust in her blood for side-streets, laneways +and corners. + +"Marriage!" said she, and she was woebegone--"Marriage will be for +ever." + +"So will heaven," he retorted comfortingly. + +"So will--the other place," said she, with a giggle, and crushed him +under the feeling that she envisaged him as the devil of that +particular Hades, instead of as an unfortunate sinner plucked up by the +heels and soused into the stew-pan by his wife. + +He addressed himself-- + +"When we are married," said he, "I'll keep a hand on you, my lady, that +you won't be able to wriggle away from. If you are slippery, and faith +you are, why I'm tough, and so you'll find it." "Get rid of your kinks +before you marry," said he. "I've no use for a wife with one eye on +me, and it a dubious one, and the other one squinting into a parlour +two streets off. You've got to settle down and quit tricks. A wife +has no one else to deceive but her husband, that's all she can want +tricks for, and there's not going to be any in my house. It's all +right for a pretty girl to be a bit larky----" + +"Am I really pretty?" said she, deeply interested and leaning forward +with her hands clasping her knees--"Do you really and truly think I am +pretty? I met a man one time, he had a brown moustache and blue eyes, +outside a tailor's shop in Georges Street, with a public-house on one +side, and he said he thought I was very pretty: he told me what his +name was, but I forget it: maybe, you know him: he wears a tweed suit +with a stripe and a soft hat--Let me see, no, his name began with a +T----" + +"His name was Thief," he roared, "and that was his profession too. +Don't let me catch you talking with a strange man, or you'll get hurt, +and his brown eyes will be mixed up with his blue moustache." + +So married they were, six months now, and the wits were nearly worried +out of him in trying to keep pace with his wife's vagaries. Matrimony +had not cured her love for side-streets, short cuts and chance +acquaintances, and she was gradually making her husband travel at a +similar tangent. When they started to go to church he would find, to +his amazement, that they were in the Museum. If they journeyed with a +Museum for an objective they were certain to pull up in the Botanic +Gardens. A call on a friend usually turned into a visit to a theatre +or a walk by the Dodder-- + +"Heart-scalded I am," said he, "with her hopping and trotting. She +travels sideways like a crab, so she does. She has a squint in her +walk. Her boots have a bias outwards. I'm getting bow-legged, so I +am, slewing round corners after her. I'll have to put my foot down," +said he. + +And now it was all finished. Here was twelve o'clock at night and an +absent wife--a detestable combination. Twelve o'clock at night outside +a house is an immoral hour, inside a house it is non-moral, but +respectable. There is nothing in the street at that time but dubiety. +Who would be a husband listening through the tolling of midnight for a +muffled footfall?--And he had told her not to go: had given an order, +formulated his imperative and inflexible will-- + +"Never mind! I'll stand by it," said he, "this is the last straw. One +break and then freedom. Surgery is better than tinkering. Cut the +knot and let who will try to join it then. One pang, and afterwards +ease, fresh air, and freedom: fresh air! gulps of it, with the head +back and an easy mind. I'm not the man to be fooled for ever--surgery! +surgery!" + +His wife had wished to see a friend that night and requested her +husband to go with her--he refused-- + +"You're always trapsin about," said he. + +She entreated. + +He heaved an angry forehead at her, puckered an eye, toned a long No +that wagged vibration behind it like an undocked tail. + +She persisted, whereupon he loosed his thunder-- + +"You're not to step outside the house this night, ma'am," said he; and +to her angry "I will go," he barked, "If you do go, don't come back +here. I'll have a dutiful wife or I'll have none--stay in or stay out. +I'm tired humouring your whimsies, let you humour mine now----" + +Then a flame gathered on her face, it grew hot in her voice, flashed to +a point in her eyes-- + +"I'm going out to-night," said she loudly; "are you coming with me?" + +"I'm not," said he. + +"Then," she snapped, "I'll go by myself." + +"Wherever you go to-night you can stay," he roared. "Don't come back +to this house." + +"I'm not mad enough to want to," she replied. "I wish I'd never seen +your old house. I wish I'd never seen yourself. You are just as dull +as your house is, and nearly as flat. It's a stupid, uninteresting, +slow house, so it is, and you are a stupid, dissatisfied grump of a +man, so you are. I'd sooner live in a cave with a hairy bear, so I +would----" and out she ran. + +Two minutes later he had heard the door bang, and then silence. + +That was five hours ago, and during all these long hours he had sat +staring sourly into the fire, seeing goodness knows what burnt-up +visions therein, waiting to hear a footfall, and an entreating voice at +the key-hole; apologies and tears perhaps, and promises of amendment. +Now it was after twelve o'clock, darkness everywhere and silence. Time +and again a policeman's tramp or the hasty, light footfall of adventure +went by. So he stood up at last sour and vindictive-- + +"She would have her fling. She wouldn't give in. She doesn't care a +tinker's curse what I say. . . . Let her go to Jericho," said he, and +he tramped up to bed. + +In his bedroom he did not trouble to get a light. He undressed in a +bitterly savage mood and rolled into bed, only to jump out again in +sudden terror, for there was some one in it. It was his wife. He lay +down with a hazy, half-mad mind. Had he wronged her? Was she more +amenable than he had fancied? She had not gone out at all--or, had she +gone out, sneaked in again by the back door and crept noiselessly to +bed. . . .? + +He fell asleep at last on the tattered fringe of a debate--Had he +wronged her? or had she diddled him again? + + + + +A GLASS OF BEER + +It was now his custom to sit there. The world has its habits, why +should a man not have his? The earth rolls out of light and into +darkness as punctually as a business man goes to and from his office; +the seasons come with the regularity of automata, and go as if they +were pushed by an ejector; so, night after night, he strolled from the +Place de l'Observatoire to the Font St. Michel, and, on the return +journey, sat down at the same Cafe, at the same table, if he could +manage it, and ordered the same drink. + +So regular had his attendance become that the waiter would suggest the +order before it was spoken. He did not drink beer because he liked it, +but only because it was not a difficult thing to ask for. Always he +had been easily discouraged, and he distrusted his French almost as +much as other people had reason to. The only time he had varied the +order was to request "un vin blanc gommee," but on that occasion he had +been served with a postage stamp for twenty-five centimes, and he still +wondered when he remembered it. + +He liked to think of his first French conversation. He wanted +something to read in English, but was timid of asking for it. He +walked past all the newspaper kiosks on the Boulevard, anxiously +scanning the vendors inside--they were usually very stalwart, very +competent females, who looked as though they had outgrown their sins +but remembered them with pleasure. They had the dully-polished, +slightly-battered look of a modern antique. The words "M'sieu, Madame" +rang from them as from bells. They were very alert, sitting, as it +were, on tiptoe, and their eyes hit one as one approached. They were +like spiders squatting in their little houses waiting for their daily +flies. + +He found one who looked jolly and harmless, sympathetic indeed, and to +her, with a flourished hat, he approached. Said he, "Donnez-moi, +Madame, s'il vous plait, le _Daily Mail_." At the second repetition +the good lady smiled at him, a smile compounded of benevolence and +comprehension, and instantly, with a "V'la M'sieu," she handed him _The +New York Herald_. They had saluted each other, and he marched down the +road in delight, with his first purchase under his arm and his first +foreign conversation accomplished. + +At that time everything had delighted him--the wide, well-lighted +Boulevard, the concierges knitting in their immense doorways, each +looking like a replica of the other, each seeming sister to a +kiosk-keeper or a cat. The exactly-courteous speech of the people and +their not quite so rigorously courteous manners pleased him. He +listened to the voluble men who went by, speaking in a haste so +breathless that he marvelled how the prepositions and conjunctions +stuck to their duty in so swirling an ocean of chatter. There was a +big black dog with a mottled head who lay nightly on the pavement +opposite the Square de l'Observatoire. At intervals he raised his lean +skull from the ground and composed a low lament to an absent friend. +His grief was respected. The folk who passed stepped sidewards for +him, and he took no heed of their passage--a lonely, introspective dog +to whom a caress or a bone were equally childish things: Let me alone, +he seemed to say, I have my grief, and it is company enough. There was +the very superior cat who sat on every window-ledge, winking at life. +He (for in France all cats are masculine by order of philology), he did +not care a rap for man or dog, but he liked women and permitted them to +observe him. There was the man who insinuated himself between the +tables at the Cafe, holding out postcard-representations of the +Pantheon, the Louvre, Notre Dame, and other places. From beneath these +cards his dexterous little finger would suddenly flip others. One saw +a hurried leg, an arm that shone and vanished, a bosom that fled shyly +again, an audacious swan, a Leda who was thoroughly enjoying herself +and had never heard of virtue. His look suggested that he thought +better of one than to suppose that one was not interested in the nude. +"M'sieu," he seemed to say, with his fixed, brown-eyed regard, "this is +indeed a leg, an authentic leg, not disguised by even the littlest of +stockings; it is arranged precisely as M'sieu would desire it." His +sorrow as he went away was dignified with regret for an inartistic +gentleman. One was _en garcon_, and yet one would not look at one's +postcards! One had better then cease to be an artist and take to +peddling onions and asparagus as the vulgar do. + +It was all a long time ago, and now, somehow, the savour had departed +from these things. Perhaps he had seen them too often. Perhaps a kind +of public surreptitiousness, a quite open furtiveness, had troubled +him. Maybe he was not well. He sat at his Cafe, three quarters down +the Boulevard, and before him a multitude of grotesque beings were +pacing as he sipped his bock. + +Good manners decreed that he should not stare too steadfastly, and he +was one who obeyed these delicate dictations. Alas! he was one who +obeyed all dictates. For him authority wore a halo, and many sins +which his heyday ought to have committed had been left undone only +because they were not sanctioned by immediate social usage. He was +often saddened when he thought of the things he had not done. It was +the only sadness to which he had access, because the evil deeds which +he had committed were of so tepid and hygienic a character that they +could not be mourned for without hypocrisy, and now that he was +released from all privileged restraints and overlookings and could do +whatever he wished he had no wish to do anything. + +His wife had been dead for over a year. He had hungered, he had prayed +for her death. He had hated that woman (and for how many years!) with +a kind of masked ferocity. How often he had been tempted to kill her +or to kill himself! How often he had dreamed that she had run away +from him or that he had run away from her! He had invented Russian +Princes, and Music Hall Stars, and American Billionaires with whom she +could adequately elope, and he had both loved and loathed the prospect. +What unending, slow quarrels they had together! How her voice had +droned pitilessly on his ears! She in one room, he in another, and +through the open door there rolled that unending recitation of woes and +reproaches, an interminable catalogue of nothings, while he sat dumb as +a fish, with a mind that smouldered or blazed. He had stood unseen +with a hammer, a poker, a razor in his hand, on tiptoe to do it. A +movement, a rush, one silent rush and it was done! He had revelled in +her murder. He had caressed it, rehearsed it, relished it, had jerked +her head back, and hacked, and listened to her entreaties bubbling +through blood! + +And then she died! When he stood by her bed he had wished to taunt +her, but he could not do it. He read in her eyes--I am dying, and in a +little time I shall have vanished like dust on the wind, but you will +still be here, and you will never see me again--He wished to ratify +that, to assure her that it was actually so, to say that he would come +home on the morrow night, and she would not be there, and that he would +return home every night, and she would never be there. But he could +not say it. Somehow the words, although he desired them, would not +come. His arm went to her neck and settled there. His hand caressed +her hair, her cheek. He kissed her eyes, her lips, her languid hands; +and the words that came were only an infantile babble of regrets and +apologies, assurances that he did love her, that he had never loved any +one before, and never would love any one again. . . . + +Every one who passed looked into the Cafe where he sat. Every one who +passed looked at him. There were men with sallow faces and wide black +hats. Some had hair that flapped about them in the wind, and from +their locks one gathered, with some distaste, the spices of Araby. +Some had cravats that fluttered and fell and rose again like banners in +a storm. There were men with severe, spade-shaped, most +responsible-looking beards, and quizzical little eyes which gave the +lie to their hairy sedateness--eyes which had spent long years in +looking sidewards as a woman passed. There were men of every stage of +foppishness--men who had spent so much time on their moustaches that +they had only a little left for their finger-nails, but their +moustaches exonerated them; others who were coated to happiness, +trousered to grotesqueness, and booted to misery. He thought--In this +city the men wear their own coats, but they all wear some one else's +trousers, and their boots are syndicated. + +He saw no person who was self-intent. They were all deeply conscious, +not of themselves, but of each other. They were all looking at each +other. They were all looking at him; and he returned the severe, or +humourous, or appraising gaze of each with a look nicely proportioned +to the passer, giving back exactly what was given to him, and no more. +He did not stare, for nobody stared. He just looked and looked away, +and was as mannerly as was required. + +A negro went by arm in arm with a girl who was so sallow that she was +only white by courtesy. He was a bulky man, and as he bent greedily +over his companion it was evident that to him she was whiter than the +snow of a single night. + +Women went past in multitudes, and he knew the appearance of them all. +How many times he had watched them or their duplicates striding and +mincing and bounding by, each moving like an animated note of +interrogation! They were long, and medium, and short. There were +women of a thinness beyond comparison, sheathed in skirts as featly as +a rapier in a scabbard. There were women of a monumental, a mighty +fatness, who billowed and rolled in multitudinous, stormy garments. +There were slow eyes that drooped on one heavily as a hand, and quick +ones that stabbed and withdrew, and glanced again appealingly, and slid +away cursing. There were some who lounged with a false sedateness, and +some who fluttered in an equally false timidity. Some wore velvet +shoes without heels. Some had shoes, the heels whereof were of such +inordinate length that the wearers looked as though they were perched +on stilts and would topple to perdition if their skill failed for an +instant. They passed and they looked at him; and from each, after the +due regard, he looked away to the next in interminable procession. + +There were faces also to be looked at: round chubby faces wherefrom the +eyes of oxen stared in slow, involved rumination. Long faces that were +keener than hatchets and as cruel. Faces that pretended to be scornful +and were only piteous. Faces contrived to ape a temperament other than +their own. Raddled faces with heavy eyes and rouged lips. Ragged lips +that had been chewed by every mad dog in the world. What lips there +were everywhere! Bright scarlet splashes in dead-white faces. Thin +red gashes that suggested rat-traps instead of kisses. Bulbous, flabby +lips that would wobble and shiver if attention failed them. Lips of a +horrid fascination that one looked at and hated and ran to. . . . +Looking at him slyly or boldly, they passed along, and turned after a +while and repassed him, and turned again in promenade. + +He had a sickness of them all. There had been a time when these were +among the things he mourned for not having done, but that time was long +past. He guessed at their pleasures, and knew them to be without salt. +Life, said he, is as unpleasant as a plate of cold porridge. Somehow +the world was growing empty for him. He wondered was he outgrowing his +illusions, or his appetites, or both? The things in which other men +took such interest were drifting beyond him, and (for it seemed that +the law of compensation can fail) nothing was drifting towards him in +recompense. He foresaw himself as a box with nothing inside it, and he +thought--It is not through love or fear or distress that men commit +suicide: it is because they have become empty: both the gods and the +devils have deserted them and they can no longer support that solemn +stagnation. He marvelled to see with what activity men and women +played the most savourless of games! With what zest of pursuit they +tracked what petty interests. He saw them as ants scurrying with +scraps of straw, or apes that pick up and drop and pick again, and he +marvelled from what fount they renewed themselves, or with what charms +they exorcised the demons of satiety. + +On this night life did not seem worth while. The taste had gone from +his mouth; his bock was water vilely coloured; his cigarette was a hot +stench. And yet a full moon was peeping in the trees along the path, +and not far away, where the countryside bowed in silver quietude, the +rivers ran through undistinguishable fields chanting their lonely +songs. The seas leaped and withdrew, and called again to the stars, +and gathered in ecstasy and roared skywards, and the trees did not rob +each other more than was absolutely necessary. The men and women were +all hidden away, sleeping in their cells, where the moon could not see +them, nor the clean wind, nor the stars. They were sundered for a +little while from their eternal arithmetic. The grasping hands were +lying as quietly as the paws of a sleeping dog. Those eyes held no +further speculation than the eyes of an ox who lies down. The tongues +that had lied all day, and been treacherous and obscene and respectful +by easy turn, said nothing more; and he thought it was very good that +they were all hidden, and that for a little time the world might swing +darkly with the moon in its own wide circle and its silence. + +He paid for his bock, gave the waiter a tip, touched his hat to a lady +by sex and a gentleman by clothing, and strolled back to his room that +was little, his candle that was three-quarters consumed, and his +picture which might be admired when he was dead but which he would +never be praised for painting; and, after sticking his foot through the +canvas, he tugged himself to bed, agreeing to commence the following +morning just as he had the previous one, and the one before that, and +the one before that again. + + + + + ONE AND ONE + + Do you hate me, you! + Sitting quietly there, + With the burnished hair + That frames the two + Deep eyes of your face + In a smooth embrace. + + And you say naught, + And I never speak; + But you rest your cheek + On your hand, a thought + Showing plain as the brow + Goes wrinkling now. + + Of what do you think, + Sitting opposite me, + As you stir the tea + That you do not drink, + And frown at nought + With those brows of thought. + + + + +THREE WOMEN WHO WEPT + +He was one of those men who can call ladies by their Christian names. +One day he met twenty-four duchesses walking on a red carpet, and he +winked at them, and they were all delighted. It was so at first he +appeared to her. Has a mere girl any protection against a man of that +quality? and she was the very merest of girls--she knew it. It was not +that she was ignorant, for she had read widely about men, and she had +three brothers as to whom she knew divers intimate things. + +The girl who has been reared among brothers has few defences against +other males. She has acquired two things--a belief in the divine right +of man, and a curiosity as to what those men are like who are not her +brothers. She may love her brothers, but she cannot believe that they +adequately represent the other sex. Does not every girl wish to marry +the antithesis of her brother? The feeling is that one should marry as +far outside of the family as is possible, and as far outside of one's +self as may be; but love has become subject to geography, and our +choice is often bounded by the tramline upon which we travel from our +houses to our businesses and back again. + +While she loved and understood her brothers, she had not in the least +understood or believed in the stories she had read, and so, when the +Young Man out of a Book came to her, she was delighted but perplexed. + +It was difficult to live up to him worthily. It was difficult to know +what he would do next, and it was exceedingly difficult to keep out of +his way; for, indeed, he seemed to pervade the part of the world where +she lived. He was as ubiquitous as the air or the sky. If she went +into a shop, he was pacing on the pavement when she came out. If she +went for a walk he was standing at the place farther than which she had +decided not to go. She had found him examining a waterfall on the +Dodder, leaning over the bear-pit in the Zoological Gardens, and +kneeling beside her in the Chapel, and her sleep had been distressed by +the reflection that maybe he was sitting on her window-sill like a sad +sparrow drenched in the rain, all its feathers on end with the cold, +and its eyes wide open staring at misery. + +The first time they met he spoke to her. He plucked a handkerchief +from somewhere and thrust it into her hand, saying-- + +"You have dropped this, I think"--and she had been too alarmed to +disown it. + +It was a mighty handkerchief. It was so big that it would scarcely fit +into her muff.--"It is a table-cloth," said she, as she solemnly +stuffed away its lengthy flaps. "It is his own," she thought a moment +later, and she would have laughed like a mad woman, only that she had +no time, for he was pacing delicately by her side, and talking in a low +voice that was partly a whisper and partly a whistle, and was entirely +and disturbingly delicious. + +The next time they met very suddenly. Scarcely a dozen paces separated +them. She could see him advancing towards her, and knew by his knitted +brows that he was searching anxiously for something to say. When they +drew together he lifted his hat and murmured-- + +"How is your handkerchief to-day?" + +The query so astonished her that (the verb is her own) she simply +bawled with laughter. From that moment he treated her with freedom, +for if once you laugh with a person you admit him to equality, you have +ranked him definitely as a vertebrate, your hand is his by right of +species, scarcely can you withhold even your lips from his advances. + +Another, a strange, a fascinating thing, was that he was afraid of her. +It was inconceivable, it was mad, but it was true. He looked at her +with disguised terror. His bravado was the slenderest mask. Every +word he said was uttered tentatively, it was subject to her approval, +and if she opposed a statement he dropped it instantly and adopted her +alternative as one adopts a gift. This astonished her who had been +prepared to be terrified. He kept a little distance between them as he +walked, and when she looked at him he looked away. She had a vision of +herself as an ogre--whiskers sprouted all over her face, her ears +bulged and swaggled, her voice became a cavernous rumble, her +conversation sounded like fee-faw-fum--and yet, her brothers were not +afraid of her in the least; they pinched her and kicked her hat. + +He spoke (but always without prejudice) of the loveliest things +imaginable--matters about which brothers had no conception, and for +which they would not have any reverence. He said one day that the sky +was blue, and, on looking she found that it was so. The sky was +amazingly blue. It had never struck her before, but there was a colour +in the firmament before which one might fall down and worship. +Sunlight was not the hot glare which it had been: it was rich, +generous, it was inexpressibly beautiful. The colour and scent of +flowers became more varied. The world emerged as from shrouds and +cerements. It was tender and radiant, comeliness lived everywhere, and +goodwill. Laughter! the very ground bubbled with it: the grasses waved +their hands, the trees danced and curtsied to one another with gentle +dignity, and the wind lurched down the path with its hat on the side of +its head and its hands in its pockets, whistling like her younger +brother. + +And then he went away. She did not see him any more. He was not by +the waterfall on the Dodder, nor hanging over the bear-pit in the Zoo. +He was not in the Chapel, nor on the pavement when she came out of a +shop. He was not anywhere. She searched, but he was not anywhere. +And the sun became the hot pest it had always been: the heavens were +stuffed with dirty clouds the way a second-hand shop is stuffed with +dirty bundles: the trees were hulking corner-boys with muddy boots: the +wind blew dust into her eye, and her brothers pulled her hair and +kicked her hat; so that she went apart from all these. She sat before +the mirror regarding herself with woeful amazement-- + +"He was afraid of me!" she said. + +And she wept into his monstrous handkerchief. + + +II + +When he came into the world he came howling, and he howled without +ceasing for seven long years, except at the times when he happened to +be partaking of nourishment, or was fast asleep, and, even then, he +snored with a note of defiance and protest which proved that his humour +was not for peace. + +The time came when he ceased to howl and became fascinated by the +problem of how to make other people howl. In this art he became an +adept. When he and another child chanced to be left together there +came, apparently from the uttermost ends of the earth, a pin, and the +other child and the pin were soon in violent and lamentable conjunction. + +So he grew. + +"Be hanged if I know what to do with him," said his father as he +rebuckled on his belt. "The devil's self hasn't got the shape or match +of such an imp in all the length and breadth of his seven hells. I'm +sick, sore and sorry whacking him, so I am, and before long I'll be +hung on the head of him. I'm saying that there's more deceit and +devilment in his bit of a carcass than there is in a public-house full +of tinkers, so there is." + +He turned to his wife-- + +"It's no credit at all the son you've bore me, ma'am, but a sorrow and +a woe that'll be killing us in our old age and maybe damning our souls +at the heel of it. Where he got his blackguardly ways from I'm not +saying, but it wasn't from my side of the house anyway, so it wasn't, +and that's a moral. Get out of my sight you sniffling lout, and if +ever I catch you at your practices again I'll lam you till you won't be +able to wink without help, so I will." + +"Musha," sobbed his wife, "don't be always talking out of you. Any one +would think that it was an old, criminal thief you were instructing, +instead of a bit of a child that'll be growing out of his wildness in +no time. Come across to me, child, come over to your mother, my lamb." + +That night, when his father got into bed, he prodded his foot against +something under the sheets. Investigation discovered a brown paper bag +at the end of the bed. A further search revealed a wasp's nest, inside +of which there was an hundred angry wasps blazing for combat. His +father left the room with more expedition than decency. He did not +stop to put on as much as his hat. He fled to the stream which ran +through the meadow at the back of their house, and lay down in it, and +in two seconds there was more bad language than water in the stream. +Every time he lifted his head for air the wasps flew at him with their +tails curled. They kept him there for half an hour, and in that time +he laid in the seeds of more rheumatism than could be cured in two +lifetimes. + +When he returned home he found his wife lying on the floor with a +blanket wrapped about her head, groaning by instinct, for she was +senseless. + +Her face had disappeared. There was nothing where it had been but +poisoned lumps. A few days later it was found that she was blind of +one eye, and there was danger of erysipelas setting in. + +The boy could not be found for some time, but a neighbour, observing a +stone come from nowhere in particular and hit a cat, located the first +cause in a ditch. He brought the boy home, and grabbed his father just +in time to prevent murder being done. + +It was soon found that the only thing which eased the restless moaning +woman was the touch of her son. All her unmanageable, delirious +thoughts centred on him-- + +"Sure he's only a boy; beating never did good to anything. Give him a +chance now for wouldn't a child be a bit wild anyhow. You will be a +good boy, won't you? Come to your mother, my lamb." + +So the lad grew, from twelve to fifteen, from fifteen to twenty. Soon +he attained to manhood. To his mother he seemed to have leaped in a +day from the careless, prattling babe to the responsibly-whiskered +miracle at whom mothers sit and laugh in secret delight. This +towering, big-footed, hairy person! was he really the little boy who +used to hide in her skirts when his father scowled? She had only to +close her eyes and she could feel again a pair of little hands clawing +at her breast, sore from the violent industry of soft, wee lips. + +So he grew. Breeches that were big became small. Bony wrists were +continually pushing out of coat cuffs. His feet would burst out of his +boots. He grew out of everything but one. A man may outgrow his +breeches, he cannot outgrow his nature: his body is never too big or +too small to hold that. + +Every living thing in the neighbourhood knew him. When a cat saw him +coming it climbed a tree and tried to look as much like a lump of wood +as it could. When a dog heard his step it tucked its tail out of sight +and sought for a hole in the hedge. The birds knew he carried stones +in his pockets. No tree cast so black a shadow in the sunlight as he +did. There were stories of a bottle of paraffin oil and a cat that +screeched in flames. Folk told of a maltreated dog that pointed its +nose to heaven and bayed a curse against humanity until a terrified man +battered it to death with a shovel. No one knew who did it, but every +one said there were only two living hearts capable of these +iniquities--one belonged to the devil, the other to our young man, and +they acquitted Satan of the deeds. + +The owner of the dog swore by the beasts in the field and the stars in +the sky that he would tear the throat of the man who had injured his +beast. + +The father drove his one-eyed wife from the house, and went with her to +live elsewhere; but she left him and went back to her son, and her +husband forswore the twain. + +When women saw him in the road they got past him with their breath +hissing through their teeth in fear. When men passed him they did it +warily, with their fists clenched and their eyes alert. He was shunned +by every one. The strength of his arms also was a thing to be afraid +of, and in the world there was but two welcomes for him, one from his +mother, the other from an old, grey rat that slept in his breast-- + +"Sure, you're all against him," his mother would say. "Why don't you +give the boy a chance? It's only the hot blood of youth that's working +in him--and he never did it either. Look how kind he is to me! never +the bad word or the hard look! Ye black hearts that blame my boy, look +among yourselves for the villain. No matter who is against you, come +to your mother, my lamb." + +He was found one day at the foot of the cliff with his neck broken. +Some said that he had slipped and fallen, some said he had committed +suicide, other some pursed their lips tightly and said nothing. All +were relieved that he was gone, saving his mother only, she mourned for +her only son, and wept bitterly, refusing to be comforted until she +died. + + +III + +She had begun to get thin. Her face was growing sharp and peaked. The +steady curve of her cheek had become a little indeterminate. Her chin +had begun to sag and her eyes to look a little weary. But she had not +observed these things, for we do not notice ourselves very much until +some other person thinks we are worthy of observation and tells us so; +and these changes are so gradual and tiny that we seldom observe them +until we awaken for a moment or two in our middle age and then we get +ready to fall asleep again. + +When her uncle died, the solicitors who had administered his will handed +her a small sum of money and intimated that from that date she must hew +out her own path in life, and as she had most of the household furniture +of her late uncle at her disposal, she decided to let lodgings. Setting +about that end with all possible expedition she finished writing +"apartments to let" on a square of pasteboard, and, having placed it +prominently in a window, she folded her mittened hands and sat down with +some trepidation to await the advent of a lodger. + +He came in the night time with the stars and the moon. He was running +like a youthful god, she thought, for her mind had not yet been weaned +from certain vanities, and she could not see that a gigantic policeman +was in his wake, tracking him with elephantine bounds, and now and again +snatching a gasp from hurry to blow furious warnings on a whistle. + +It was the sound of the whistle which opened her eyes through her ears. +She went to the door and saw him coming framed in the moonlight, his arms +pressed tightly to his sides, his head well up and his feet kicking a +mile a minute on the pavement. Behind him the whistle shrilled with +angry alarm, and the thunder of monumental feet came near as the +policeman sprinted in majesty. + +As the lodger ran she looked at him. He was a long-legged, young man +with a pleasant, clean-shaven face. His eyes met hers, and, although he +grinned anxiously, she saw that he was frightened. That frightened smile +gripped her and she panted noiselessly, "Oh, run, run!" + +As he drew level he fixed his gaze on her, and, stopping suddenly, he +ducked under her arm and was inside the house in a twinkling. + +The poor lady's inside curled up in fear and had started to uncurl in +screams when she felt a hand laid gently on her arm, and, "Don't make a +noise, or I'm caught," said a voice, whereupon, and with exceeding +difficulty, she closed her mouth while the scream went sizzling through +her teeth in little gasps. But now the enemy appeared round the corner, +tooting incessantly on his whistle, and whacking sparks from the +cobblestones as he ran. Behind her she could hear the laboured breathing +of a spent runner. The lodger was kneeling at her skirts: he caught her +hand and pressed his face against it entreatingly-- + +The policeman drew near-- + +"Did you see a fellow skedaddling along here, ma'am?" said he. + +She hesitated for only a moment and then, pointing to a laneway opposite, +replied-- + +"He went up there." + +"Thank you, ma'am," said the policeman with a genial smile, and he +sprinted up the laneway whistling cheerily. + +She turned to the lodger-- + +"You had better go now," said she. + +He looked at her ruefully and hesitated-- + +"If I go now," he replied, "I'll be caught and get a month. I'll have to +eat skilly, you know, and pick oakum, and get my hair cut." + +She looked at his hair--it was brown and wavy, just at his ears it +crisped into tiny curls, and she thought it would be a great pity to cut +it. He bore her scrutiny well, with just a trifle of embarrassment and a +shyly humorous eye-- + +"You are the kindest woman I ever met," said he, "and I'll never forget +you as long as I live. I'll go away now because I wouldn't like to get +you into trouble for helping me." + +"What did you do?" she faltered. + +"I got into a fight with another man," he replied, "and while we were +hammering each other the policeman came up. He was going to arrest me, +and, before I knew what I was doing, I knocked him down." + +She shook her head-- + +"You should not have done that. That was very wrong, for he was only +doing his duty." + +"I know it," he admitted, "but, do you see, I didn't know what I was +doing, and then, when I hit him, I got frightened and ran." + +"You poor boy," said she tenderly. + +"And somehow, when I saw you, I knew you wouldn't give me up: wasn't it +queer?" + +What a nice, gentlemanly young fellow he is, she thought. + +"But, of course, I cannot be trespassing on your kindness any longer," he +continued, "so I'll leave at once, and if ever I get the chance to repay +your kindness to a stranger----" + +"Perhaps," said she, "it might not be quite safe for you to go yet. Come +inside and I will give you a cup of tea. You must be worn out with the +excitement and the danger. Why, you are shaking all over: a cup of tea +will steady your nerves and give him time to stop looking for you." + +"Perhaps," said he, "if I turned my coat inside out and turned my +trousers up, they wouldn't notice me." + +"We will talk it over," she replied with a wise nod. + +That was how the lodger came. He told her his name and his +employment--he was a bookmaker's clerk. He brought his luggage, +consisting mostly of neckties, to her house the following day from his +former lodgings-- + +"Had a terrible time getting away from them," said he. "They rather +liked me, you know, and couldn't make out why I wanted to leave." + +"As if you weren't quite free to do as you wished," quoth his indignant +new landlady. + +"And then, when they found I would go, they made me pay two weeks' rent +in lieu of notice--mean, wasn't it?" + +"The low people," she replied. "I will not ask you to pay anything this +week." + +He put his bandbox on the ground, and shook hands with her-- + +"You are a brick," said he, "the last and the biggest of them. There +isn't the like of you in this or any other world, and never was and never +will be, world without end, amen." + +"Oh, don't say that," said she shyly. + +"I will," he replied, "for it's the truth. I'll hire a sandwichman to +stop people in the street and tell it to them. I'll get a week's +engagement at the theatre and sing it from the stage. I'll make up a +poem about your goodness. I don't know what to do to thank you. Do you +see, if I had to pay you now I'd have to pawn something, and I really +believe I have pawned everything they'd lend on to get the money for that +two weeks' rent. I'm broke until Friday, that's my pay day, but that +night I'll come home with my wages piled up on a cart." + +"I can lend you a few shillings until then," said she laughing. + +"Oh, no," said he. "It's not fair. I couldn't do that," but he could. + +Well the light of the world shone out of the lodger. He was like a sea +breeze in a soap factory. When he awakened in the morning he whistled. +When he came down to breakfast he sang. When he came home in the evening +he danced. He had an amazing store of vitality: from the highest hair on +the top of his head down to his heels he was alive. His average language +was packed with jokes and wonderful curses. He was as chatty as a girl, +as good-humoured as a dog, as unconscious as a kitten--and she knew +nothing at all of men, except, perhaps, that they wore trousers and were +not girls. The only man with whom she had ever come in contact was her +uncle, and he might have been described as a sniffy old man with a cold; +a blend of gruel and grunt, living in an atmosphere of ointment and pills +and patent medicine advertisements--and, behold, she was living in +unthinkable intimacy with the youngest of young men; not an old, +ache-ridden, cough-racked, corn-footed septuagenarian, but a young, +fresh-faced, babbling rascal who laughed like the explosion of a +blunderbuss, roared songs as long as he was within earshot and danced +when he had nothing else to do. He used to show her how to do +hand-balances on the arm-chair, and while his boots were cocked up in the +air she would grow stiff with terror for his safety and for that of the +adjacent crockery. + +The first morning she was giving him his breakfast, intending afterwards +to have her own meal in the kitchen, but he used language of such +strangely attractive ferocity, and glared at her with such a +humorously-mad eye that she was compelled to breakfast with him. + +At night, when he returned to his tea, he swore by this and by that he +would die of hunger unless she ate with him; and then he told her all the +doings of the day, the bets that had been made and lost, and what sort of +a man his boss was, and he extolled the goodness of his friends, and +lectured on the vast iniquity of his enemies. + +So things went until she was as intimate with him as if he had been her +brother. One night he came home just a trifle tipsy. She noted at last +what was wrong with him, and her heart yearned over the sinner. There +were five or six glasses inside of him, and each was the father of an +antic. He was an opera company, a gymnasium, and a menagerie at once, +all tinged with a certain hilarious unsteadiness which was fascinating. +But at last he got to his bed, which was more than she did. + +She sat through the remainder of the night listening to the growth of her +half-starved heart. Oh, but there was a warmth there now. . . .! +Springtime and the moon in flood. What new leaves are these which the +trees put forth? Bird, singing at the peep of morn, where gottest thou +thy song? Be still, be still, thou stranger, fluttering a wing at my +breast. . . . + +At the end of a month the gods moved, and when the gods move they trample +mortals in the dust. + +The lodger's employer left Dublin for London, taking his clerk with him. + +"Good-bye," said he. + +"Good-bye," she replied, "and a pleasant journey to you." + +And she took the card with "Apartments to Let" written upon it and placed +it carefully in the window, and then, folding her mittened hands, she sat +down to await the coming of another lodger, and as she sat she wept +bitterly. + + + + +THE TRIANGLE + +Nothing is true for ever. A man and a fact will become equally +decrepit and will tumble in the same ditch, for truth is as mortal as +man, and both are outlived by the tortoise and the crow. + +To say that two is company and three is a crowd is to make a very +temporary statement. After a short time satiety or use and wont has +crept sunderingly between the two, and, if they are any company at all, +they are bad company, who pray discreetly but passionately for the +crowd which is censured by the proverb. + +If there had not been a serpent in the Garden of Eden it is likely that +the bored inhabitants of Paradise would have been forced to import one +from the outside wilds merely to relax the tedium of a too-sustained +duet. There ought to be a law that when a man and a woman have been +married for a year they should be forcibly separated for another year. +In the meantime, as our law-givers have no sense, we will continue to +invoke the serpent. + +Mrs. Mary Morrissy had been married for quite a time to a gentleman of +respectable mentality, a sufficiency of money, and a surplus of +leisure--Good things? We would say so if we dared, for we are growing +old and suspicious of all appearances, and we do not easily recognize +what is bad or good. Beyond the social circumference we are confronted +with a debatable ground where good and bad are so merged that we cannot +distinguish the one from the other. To her husband's mental +attainments (from no precipitate, dizzy peaks did he stare; it was only +a tiny plain with the tiniest of hills in the centre) Mrs. Morrissy +extended a courtesy entirely unmixed with awe. For his money she +extended a hand which could still thrill to an unaccustomed +prodigality, but for his leisure (and it was illimitable) she could +find no possible use. + +The quality of permanency in a transient world is terrifying. A +permanent husband is a bore, and we do not know what to do with him. +He cannot be put on a shelf. He cannot be hung on a nail. He will not +go out of the house. There is no escape from him, and he is always the +same. A smile of a certain dimension, moustaches of this inevitable +measurement, hands that waggle and flop like those of automata--these +are his. He eats this way and he drinks that way, and he will continue +to do so until he stiffens into the ultimate quietude. He snores on +this note, he laughs on that, dissonant, unescapeable, unchanging. +This is the way he walks, and he does not know how to run. A +predictable beast indeed! He is known inside and out, catalogued, +ticketed, and he cannot be packed away. + +Mrs. Morrissy did not yet commune with herself about it, but if her +grievance was anonymous it was not unknown. There is a back-door to +every mind as to every house, and although she refused it house-room, +the knowledge sat on her very hearthstone whistling for recognition. + +Indeed, she could not look anywhere without seeing her husband. He was +included in every landscape. His moustaches and the sun rose together. +His pyjamas dawned with the moon. When the sea roared so did he, and +he whispered with the river and the wind. He was in the picture but +was out of drawing. He was in the song but was out of tune. He +agitated her dully, surreptitiously, unceasingly. She questioned of +space in a whisper, "Are we glued together?" said she. There was a bee +in a flower, a burly rascal who did not care a rap for any one: he sat +enjoying himself in a scented and gorgeous palace, and in him she +confided: + +"If," said she to the bee, "if that man doesn't stop talking to me I'll +kick him. I'll stick a pin in him if he does not go out for a walk." + +She grew desperately nervous. She was afraid that if she looked at him +any longer she would see him. To-morrow, she thought, I may notice +that he is a short, fat man in spectacles, and that will be the end of +everything. But the end of everything is also the beginning of +everything, and so she was one half in fear and the other half in hope. +A little more and she would hate him, and would begin the world again +with the same little hope and the same little despair for her meagre +capital. + +She had already elaborated a theory that man was intended to work, and +that male sloth was offensive to Providence and should be forbidden by +the law. At times her tongue thrilled, silently as yet, to certain +dicta of the experienced Aunt who had superintended her youth, to the +intent that a lazy man is a nuisance to himself and to everybody else; +and, at last, she disguised this saying as an anecdote and repeated it +pleasantly to her husband. + +He received it coldly, pondered it with disfavour, and dismissed it by +arguing that her Aunt had whiskers, that a whiskered female is a freak, +and that the intellectual exercises of a freak are---- He lifted his +eyebrows and his shoulders. He brushed her Aunt from the tips of his +fingers and blew her delicately beyond good manners and the mode. + +But time began to hang heavily on both. The intellectual antics of a +leisured man become at last wearisome; his methods of thought, by mere +familiarity, grow distasteful; the time comes when all the arguments +are finished, there is nothing more to be said on any subject, and +boredom, without even the covering, apologetic hand, yawns and yawns +and cannot be appeased. Thereupon two cease to be company, and even a +serpent would be greeted as a cheery and timely visitor. Dismal +indeed, and not infrequent, is that time, and the vista therefrom is a +long, dull yawn stretching to the horizon and the grave. If at any +time we do revalue the values, let us write it down that the person who +makes us yawn is a criminal knave, and then we will abolish matrimony +and read Plato again. + +The serpent arrived one morning hard on Mrs. Morrissy's pathetic +pressure. It had three large trunks, a toy terrier, and a volume of +verse. The trunks contained dresses, the dog insects, and the book +emotion--a sufficiently enlivening trilogy! Miss Sarah O'Malley wore +the dresses in exuberant rotation, Mr. Morrissy read the emotional +poetry with great admiration, Mrs. Morrissy made friends with the dog, +and life at once became complex and joyful. + +Mr. Morrissy, exhilarated by the emotional poetry, drew, with an +instinct too human to be censured, more and more in the direction of +his wife's cousin, and that lady, having a liking for comedy, observed +the agile posturings of the gentleman on a verbal summit up and down +and around which he flung himself with equal dexterity and +satisfaction--crudely, he made puns--and the two were further thrown +together by the enforced absences of Mrs. Morrissy, into a privacy more +than sealed, by reason of the attentions of a dog who would climb to +her lap, and there, with an angry nose, put to no more than temporary +rout the nimble guests of his jacket. Shortly Mrs. Morrissy began to +look upon the toy terrier with a meditative eye. + +It was from one of these, now periodical, retreats that Mrs. Morrissy +first observed the rapt attitude of her husband, and, instantly, life +for her became bounding, plentiful, and engrossing. + +There is no satisfaction in owning that which nobody else covets. Our +silver is no more than second-hand, tarnished metal until some one else +speaks of it in terms of envy. Our husbands are barely tolerable until +a lady friend has endeavoured to abstract their cloying attentions. +Then only do we comprehend that our possessions are unique, beautiful, +well worth guarding. + +Nobody has yet pointed out that there is an eighth sense; and yet the +sense of property is more valuable and more detestable than all the +others in combination. The person who owns something is civilised. It +is man's escape from wolf and monkeydom. It is individuality at last, +or the promise of it, while those other ownerless people must remain +either beasts of prey or beasts of burden, grinning with ineffective +teeth, or bowing stupid heads for their masters' loads, and all begging +humbly for last straws and getting them. + +Under a sufficiently equable exterior Mrs. Morrissy's blood was pulsing +with greater activity than had ever moved it before. It raced! It +flew! At times the tide of it thudded to her head, boomed in her ears, +surged in fierce waves against her eyes. Her brain moved with a +complexity which would have surprised her had she been capable of +remarking upon it. Plot and counterplot! She wove webs horrid as a +spider's. She became, without knowing it, a mistress of psychology. +She dissected motions and motives. She builded theories precariously +upon an eyelash. She pondered and weighed the turning of a head, the +handing of a sugar-bowl. She read treason in a laugh, assignations in +a song, villainy in a new dress. Deeper and darker things! Profound +and vicious depths plunging stark to where the devil lodged in +darknesses too dusky for registration! She looked so steadily on these +gulfs and murks that at last she could see anything she wished to see; +and always, when times were critical, when this and that, abominations +indescribable, were separate by no more than a pin's point, she must +retire from her watch (alas for a too-sensitive nature!) to chase the +enemies of a dog upon which, more than ever, she fixed a meditative eye. + +To get that woman out of the house became a pressing necessity. Her +cousin carried with her a baleful atmosphere. She moved cloudy with +doubt. There was a diabolic aura about her face, and her hair was red! +These things were patent. Was one blind or a fool? A straw will +reveal the wind, so will an eyelash, a smile, the carriage of a dress. +Ankles also! One saw too much of them. Let it be said then. Teeth +and neck were bared too often and too broadly. If modesty was indeed +more than a name, then here it was outraged. Shame too! was it only a +word? Does one do this and that without even a blush? Even vice +should have its good manners, its own decent retirements. If there is +nothing else let there be breeding! But at this thing the world might +look and understand and censure if it were not brass-browed and stupid. +Sneak! Traitress! Serpent! Oh, Serpent! do you slip into our very +Eden? looping your sly coils across our flowers, trailing over our beds +of narcissus and our budding rose, crawling into our secret arbours and +whispering-places and nests of happiness! Do you flaunt and sway your +crested head with a new hat on it every day? Oh, that my Aunt were +here, with the dragon's teeth, and the red breath, and whiskers to +match! Here Mrs. Morrissy jumped as if she had been bitten (as indeed +she had been) and retired precipitately, eyeing the small dog that +frisked about her with an eye almost petrified with meditation. + +To get that woman out of the house quickly and without scandal. Not to +let her know for a moment, for the blink and twitter of an eyelid, of +her triumph. To eject her with ignominy, retaining one's own dignity +in the meantime. Never to let her dream of an uneasiness that might +have screamed, an anger that could have bitten and scratched and been +happy in the primitive exercise. Was such a task beyond her adequacy? + +Below in the garden the late sun slanted upon her husband, as with +declamatory hands and intense brows he chanted emotional poetry, ready +himself on the slope of opportunity to roll into verses from his own +resources. He criticised, with agile misconception, the inner meaning, +the involved, hard-hidden heart of the poet; and the serpent sat before +him and nodded. She smiled enchantments at him, and allurements, and +subtle, subtle disagreements. On the grass at their feet the toy +terrier bounded from his slumbers and curved an imperative and furious +hind-leg in the direction of his ear. + +Mrs. Morrissy called the dog, and it followed her into the house, +frisking joyously. From the kitchen she procured a small basket, and +into this she packed some old cloths and pieces of biscuit. Then she +picked up the terrier, cuffed it on both sides of the head, popped it +into the basket, tucked its humbly-agitated tail under its abject ribs, +closed the basket, and fastened it with a skewer. She next addressed a +label to her cousin's home, tied it to the basket, and despatched a +servant with it to the railway-station, instructing her that it should +be paid for on delivery. + +At breakfast the following morning her cousin wondered audibly why her +little, weeny, tiny pet was not coming for its brecky. + +Mrs. Morrissy, with a smile of infinite sweetness, suggested that Miss +O'Malley's father would surely feed the brute when it arrived. "It was +a filthy little beast," said she brightly; and she pushed the +toast-rack closer to her husband. + +There followed a silence which drowsed and buzzed to eternity, and +during which Mr. Morrissy's curled moustaches straightened and grew +limp and drooped. An edge of ice stiffened around Miss O'Malley. +Incredulity, frozen and wan, thawed into swift comprehension and +dismay, lit a flame in her cheeks, throbbed burningly at the lobes of +her ears, spread magnetic and prickling over her whole stung body, and +ebbed and froze again to immobility. She opposed her cousin's kind +eyes with a stony brow. + +"I think," said she rising, "that I had better see to my packing." + +"Must you go?" said Mrs. Morrissy, with courteous unconcern, and she +helped herself to cream. Her husband glared insanely at a pat of +butter, and tried to look like some one who was somewhere else. + +Miss O'Malley closed the door behind her with extreme gentleness. + +So the matter lay. But the position was unchanged. For a little time +peace would reign in that household, but the same driving necessity +remained, and before long another, and perhaps more virulent, serpent +would have to be requisitioned for the assuagement of those urgent +woes. A man's moustaches will arise with the sun; not Joshua could +constrain them to the pillow after the lark had sung reveille. A woman +will sit pitilessly at the breakfast table however the male eye may +shift and quail. It is the business and the art of life to degrade +permanencies. Fluidity is existence, there is no other, and for ever +the chief attraction of Paradise must be that there is a serpent in it +to keep it lively and wholesome. Lacking the serpent we are no longer +in Paradise, we are at home, and our sole entertainment is to yawn when +we wish to. + + + + + THE DAISIES + + In the scented bud of the morning--O, + When the windy grass went rippling far, + I saw my dear one walking slow + In the field where the daisies are. + + We did not laugh and we did not speak + As we wandered happily to and fro; + I kissed my dear on either cheek + In the bud of the morning--O. + + A lark sang up from the breezy land, + A lark sang down from a cloud afar, + And she and I went hand in hand + In the field where the daisies are. + + + + +THREE ANGRY PEOPLE + +I + +He sat cross-legged on the roadside beside a heap of stones, and with +slow regularity his hammer swung up and down, cracking a stone into +small pieces at each descent. But his heart was not in the work. He +hit whatever stone chanced to be nearest. There was no cunning +selection in his hammer, nor any of these oddities of stroke which a +curious and interested worker would have essayed for the mere trial of +his artistry. + +He was not difficult to become acquainted with, and, after a little +conversation, I discovered that all the sorrows of the world were +sagging from his shoulders. Everything he had ever done was wrong, he +said. Everything that people had done to him was wrong, that he +affirmed; nor had he any hope that matters would mend, for life was +poisoned at the fountain-head and there was no justice anywhere. +Justice! he raised his eyebrows with the horrid stare of a man who +searches for apparitions; he lowered them again to the bored blink of +one who will not believe in apparitions even though he see them--there +was not even fairness! Perhaps (and his bearing was mildly tolerant), +perhaps some people believed there was fairness, but he had his share +of days to count by and remember. Forty-nine years of here and there, +and in and out, and up and down; walking all kinds of roads in all +kinds of weathers; meeting this sort of person and that sort, and many +an adventure that came and passed away without any good to it--"and +now," said he sternly, "I am breaking stones on a bye-way." + +"A bye-road such as this," said I, "has very few travellers, and it may +prove a happy enough retreat." + +"Or a hiding-place," said he gloomily. + +We sat quietly for a few moments-- + +"Is there no way of being happy?" said I. + +"How could you be happy if you have not got what you want?" and he +thumped solidly with his hammer. + +"What do you want?" I asked. + +"Many a thing," said he, "many a thing." + +I squatted on the ground in front of him, and he continued-- + +"You that are always travelling, did you ever meet a contented person +in all your travels?" + +"Yes," said I, "I met a man yesterday, three hills away from here, and +he told me he was happy." + +"Maybe he wasn't a poor man?" + +"I asked him that, and he said he had enough to be going on with." + +"I wonder what he had." + +"I wondered too, and he told me.--He said that he had a wife, a son, an +apple-tree, and a fiddle. + +"He said, that his wife was dumb, his son was deaf, his apple-tree was +barren, and his fiddle was broken." + +"It didn't take a lot to satisfy that man." + +"And he said, that these things, being the way they were, gave him no +trouble attending on them, and so he was left with plenty of time for +himself." + +"I think the man you are telling me about was a joker; maybe you are a +joker yourself for that matter." + +"Tell me," said I, "the sort of things a person should want, for I am a +young man, and everything one learns is so much to the good." + +He rested his hammer and stared sideways down the road, and he remained +so, pursing and relaxing his lips, for a little while. At last he said +in a low voice-- + +"A person wants respect from other people.--If he doesn't get that, +what does he signify more than a goat or a badger? We live by what +folk think of us, and if they speak badly of a man doesn't that finish +him for ever?" + +"Do people speak well of you?" I asked. + +"They speak badly of me," said he, "and the way I am now is this, that +I wouldn't have them say a good word of me at all." + +"Would you tell me why the people speak badly of you?" + +"You are travelling down the road," said he, "and I am staying where I +am. We never met before in all the years, and we may never meet again, +and so I'll tell you what is in my mind.--A person that has neighbours +will have either friends or enemies, and it's likely enough that he'll +have the last unless he has a meek spirit. And it's the same way with +a man that's married, or a man that has a brother. For the neighbours +will spy on you from dawn to dark, and talk about you in every place, +and a wife will try to rule you in the house and out of the house until +you are badgered to a skeleton, and a brother will ask you to give him +whatever thing you value most in the world." + +He remained silent for a few minutes, with his hammer eased on his +knee, and then, in a more heated strain, he continued-- + +"These are three things a man doesn't like--he doesn't like to be spied +on, and he doesn't like to be ruled and regulated, and he doesn't like +to be asked for a thing he wants himself. And, whether he lets himself +be spied on or not, he'll be talked about, and in any case he'll be +made out to be a queer man; and if he lets his wife rule him he'll be +scorned and laughed at, and if he doesn't let her rule him he'll be +called a rough man; and if he once gives to his brother he will have to +keep on giving for ever, and if he doesn't give in at all he'll get the +bad name and the sour look as he goes about his business." + +"You have bad neighbours, indeed," said I. + +"I'd call them that." + +"And a brother that would ask you for a thing you wanted yourself +wouldn't be a decent man." + +"He would not." + +"Tell me," said I, "what kind of a wife have you?" + +"She's the same as any one else's wife to look at, but I fancy the +other women must be different to live with." + +"Why do you say that?" + +"Because you can hear men laughing and singing in every public-house +that you'd go into, and they wouldn't do that if their wives were hard +to live with, for nobody could stand a bad comrade. A good wife, a +good brother, a good neighbour--these are three good things, but you +don't find them lying in every ditch." + +"If you went to a ditch for your wife----!" said I. + +He pursed up his lips at me. + +"I think," said I, "that you need not mind the neighbours so very much +for no one can spy on you but yourself. If your mind was in a glass +case instead of in a head it would be different; and no one can really +rule and regulate you but yourself, and that's well worth doing." + +"Different people," said he shortly, "are made differently." + +"Maybe," said I, "your wife would be a good wife to some other husband, +and your brother might be decent enough if he had a different brother." + +He wrinkled up his eyes and looked at me very steadily-- + +"I'll be saying good-bye to you, young man," said he, and he raised his +hammer again and began to beat solemnly on the stones. + +I stood by him for a few minutes, but as he neither spoke nor looked at +me again I turned to my own path intending to strike Dublin by the Paps +of Dana and the long slopes beyond them. + + +II + +One day he chucked his job, put up his tools, told the boss he could do +this and that, called hurroo to the boys, and sauntered out of the place +with a great deal of dignity and one week's wages in cash. + +There were many reasons why he should not have quitted his work, not the +lightest of them being that the food of a wife and family depended on his +sticking to it, but a person who has a temper cannot be expected to have +everything else. + +Nothing makes a man feel better than telling his employer that he and his +job can go bark at one another. It is the dream of a great many people, +and were it not for the glamour of that idea most folk would commit +suicide through sheer disgust. Getting the "sack" is an experience which +wearies after the first time. Giving the sack is a felicity granted only +to a few people. To go home to one's wife with the information that you +have been discharged is an adventure which one does not wish to repeat, +but to go home and hand her thirty shillings with the statement that you +have discharged yourself is not one of the pleasantest ways of passing +time. + +His wife's habits were as uncertain as her temper, but not as bad. She +had a hot tongue, a red head, a quick fist and a big family--ingredients +to compose a peppery dish. They had been only a short time married when +she gave her husband to understand that there was to be only one head of +that household, and that would not be he. He fought fiercely for a +position on the executive but he did not get it. His voice in the +household economy, which had commenced with the lordly "Let this be +done," concluded in the timidly blustering "All right, have it your own +way." + +Furthermore, the theory that a woman is helpmate to a man was repugnant +to her. She believed and asserted that a man had to be managed, and she +had several maxims to which she often gave forcible and contemptuous +utterance-- + +"Let a man go his own road to-day and he will be shaking hands with the +devil to-morrow. + +"Give a man his head and he'll lose it. + +"Whiskers and sense were never found in the same patch. + +"There's more brains in one woman's finger than there is in the +congregated craniums of a battalion of men folk. + +"Where there is two men there's one fight. Where there's three there's a +drinking match, two fights and a fine to be paid." + +But while advocating peace at any price and a tax on muscles that were +bigger than a fly's knuckle she was herself a warrior of the breed of +Finn and strong enough to scare a pugilist. When she was angry her +family got over the garden wall, her husband first. She did not think +very much of him, and she told him so, but he was sufficient of a man not +to believe her. + +For a long time he had been a dissatisfied person, leading a grumpy +existence which was only made bearable by gusts of solitary blasphemy. +When a man curses openly he is healthy enough, but when he takes to +either swearing or drinking in secret then he has travelled almost beyond +redemption point. + +So behold our man knocking at the door, still warmed by the fray with his +late employer, but with the first tremors of fear beginning to tatter up +and down his spine. + +His wife opened the door herself. She was engaged in cleaning the place, +a duty in which she was by no means remiss, one of the prime points in +her philosophy being that a house was not clean until one's food could be +eaten off the floor. She was a big comely woman, but at the moment she +did not look dainty. A long wisp of red hair came looping down on her +shoulders. A smear of soot toned down the roses of her cheek, her arms +were smothered in soap suds, and the fact that she was wearing a pair of +her husband's boots added nothing to her attractions. + +When she saw her husband standing in the doorway at this unaccustomed +hour she was a little taken aback, but, scenting trouble, she at once +opened the attack-- + +"What in the name of heaven brings you here at this hour of the day, and +the place upset the way it is? Don't walk on the soap, man, haven't you +got eyes in your head?" + +"I'm not walking on the soap with my head," he retorted, "if I was I'd +see it, and if it wasn't on the floor it wouldn't be tripping folk up. A +nice thing it is that a man can't come into his own house without being +set slipping and sliding like an acrobat on an iceberg." + +"And," cried his wife, "if I kept the soap locked up it's the nice, clean +house you'd have to come into. Not that you'd mind if the place was +dirty, I'll say that much for you, for what one is reared to one likes, +and what is natural is pleasant. But I got a different rearing let me +tell you, and while I'm in it I'll have the clean house no matter who +wants the dirty one." + +"You will so," said he, looking at the soapy water for a place to walk on. + +"Can't you be coming in then, and not stand there framed in the doorway, +gawking like a fool at a miracle." + +"I'll sail across if you'll get a canal boat or a raft," said he, "or, if +the children are kept out of sight, I'll strip, ma'm, and swim for it." + +His wife regarded him with steady gloom. + +"If you took the smallest interest in your home," said she, "and were +less set on gallivanting about the country, going to the Lord knows +where, with the Lord knows who, you'd know that the children were away in +school at this hour. Nice indeed the places you visit and the company +you keep, if the truth were known--walk across it, man, and wipe your +feet on the kitchen mat." + +So he walked into the kitchen, and sat down, and, as he sat, the last +remnants of his courage trembled down into his boots and evaporated. + +His wife came in after him--she drooped a speculative eye on her lord-- + +"You didn't say what brought you home so early," said she. + +When a hard thing has to be done the quickest way is generally the best +way. It is like the morning bath--don't ruminate, jump in, for the +longer you wait the more dubious you get, and the tub begins to look +arctic and repellent. + +Some such philosophy as this dictated his attitude. He lugged out his +week's wages, slapped it on the table, and said-- + +"I've got the sack." + +Then he stretched his legs out, pushed his fists deep into his trouser +pockets, and waited. + +His wife sat down too, slowly and with great care, and she stared in +silence at her husband-- + +"Do you tell me you have lost your employment?" said she in a quiet voice. + +"I do, then," said he. "I chucked it myself. I told old Whiskers that +he could go and boil his job and his head together and sell the soup for +cat-lap." + +"You threw up your situation yourself." + +"You've got the truth of it, ma'm," he rejoined. + +"Maybe you'd be telling me what you did the like of that for?" + +"Because," said he, "I'm a man and not a mouse. Because I don't want to +be at the beck and call of every dog and devil that has a bit more money +than I have--a man has got to be a man sometimes," he growled. + +"Sure, you're telling the truth," said his wife, nodding her head at him. +"A man should be a man sometimes. It's the pity of the world that he +can't be a man always: and, indeed, it's the hard thing for a woman to +tell herself that the man she has got isn't a man at all, but a big fool +with no more wit than a boy." + +Now this was the first time he had found his wife take trouble lying +down. As a rule she was readier for a fight than he was. She jumped +into a row with the alacrity of a dog: and the change worked on him. He +looked at her listless hands, and the sight of those powerful organs +hanging so powerlessly wrought on him. Women often forget that their +weakness is really their strength. The weakest things in the world are +by a queer paradox always the strongest. The toughest stone will wear +away under the dropping of water, a mushroom will lift a rock on its +delicate head, a child will make its father work for it. So the too +capable woman will always have a baby to nurse, and that baby will be her +husband. If she buttress her womanhood too much she saps his manhood. +Let her love all she can and never stint that blessing, but a woman +cannot often be obeyed and loved at the same time. A man cannot obey a +woman constantly and retain his self-respect: the muscles of his arms +reproach him if he does, and the man with his self-respect gone is a man +with a grudge, he will learn to hate the agent who brought him low. A +day may come when he will rise and beat her in self-defence, with his +fists if he is sufficiently brutalised, some subtler, but no less +efficient, weapon if his manhood refuses to be degraded--and this was our +case. His wife had grabbed the reins and driven the matrimonial coach: +driven it well, that is true, but the driver, by right of precedent, had +sat by hurt and angry, and at last, in an endeavour to prove his manhood +among men, he had damned his employer's self and work, although in +reality all his fury was directed against the mother of his children. He +threw up his work, and the semi-conscious thought that went home with him +was--"Now she will be sorry. If she must do everything let her earn the +bread." + +The woman knew what poverty meant, and she had four young children. It +was the thought of these helpless ones crying with hunger (she could hear +them already, her ears were dinned with their hungry lamentation) that +took the fibre out of her arms, and left her without any fight. She +could only sit and look with wretched eyes on the man whom she had been +demoralising, and, for the first time since he knew her, the tears came, +and the poor woman laid her head on the kitchen table and wept. + +He was astonished, he was dismayed, but he could not stand her tears: he +ran to her--the first time he ever did run to her-- + +"Sure, darling," said he, "is it crying you are? What would you be doing +that for? If I've lost one job I can get another. I'm not afraid of +work, and I know how to do it. I'll get something to do at once, if it's +only wheeling a handcart, or selling cockles in public-houses. Wisha, +dry your eyes--they're as pretty as they ever were," said he, trying to +look at them, while his wife, with a strange shyness, would not let him +see, for she felt that there was a strange man with her, some one she did +not know. That was a man's hand on her shoulder, and she had never felt +a man's hand before, as long as she was married. + +"I'll go out at once," said he, "and when I come in to-night I'll have a +job if I have to bang it out of some one with a shovel." + +He slapped on his hat, kicked the soap out of the way, tramped through +the water on the floor, and when at the door he turned again and came +back to kiss his wife, a form of caress which had long fallen into +desuetude, and so, out into the street, a man again. + +When he had gone his wife returned to her scrubbing, and, as she worked +she smiled at something she was remembering, and, now and again, a bit of +a song came from lips that had scolded so much. Having finished her work +she spent nearly an hour at the looking-glass doing up her hair (grand +hair it was, too) with her ears listening for a footstep. Now and again +she would run to the pot to see were the potatoes doing all right--"The +children will be in shortly," said she, "and hungry to the bone, poor +dears." + +But she was not thinking of the children. The warmth of a kiss was still +on her lips. Something in the back of her head was saying--"He will do +it again when he comes in." + +And the second honeymoon was pleasanter than the first. + + +III + +She was tall and angular. Her hair was red, and scarce, and untidy. +Her hands were large and packed all over with knuckles and her feet +would have turned inwards at the toes, only that she was aware of and +corrected their perversities. + +She was sitting all alone, and did not look up as I approached-- + +"Tell me," said I, "why you have sat for more than an hour with your +eyes fixed on nothing, and your hands punching your lap?" + +She looked at me for a fleeting instant, and then, looking away again, +she began to speak.--Her voice was pleasant enough, but it was so +strong that one fancied there were bones in it-- + +"I do not dislike women," said she, "but I think they seldom speak of +anything worth listening to, nor do they often do anything worth +looking at: they bore and depress me, and men do not." + +"But," said I, "you have not explained why you thump your lap with your +fist?" + +She proceeded-- + +"I do not hate women, nor do I love men. It was only that I did not +take much notice of the one, and that I liked being with the other, +for, as things are, there is very little life for a person except in +thinking. All our actions are so cumbered by laws and customs that we +cannot take a step beyond the ordinary without finding ourselves either +in gaol or in Coventry." + +Having said this, she raised her bleak head and stared like an eagle +across the wastes. + +After I had coughed twice I touched her arm, and said-- + +"Yes?" + +"One must live," said she quickly. "I do not mean that we must eat and +sleep--these mechanical matters are settled for many of us, but life +consists in thinking, and nothing else, yet many people go from the +cradle to the grave without having lived differently from animals. I +do not want to be one of them. Their whole theory of life is +mechanical. They eat and drink. They invite each other to their +houses to eat and drink, and they use such speech as they are gifted +with in discussing their food and whatever other palpable occurrence +may have chanced to them in the day. It is a step, perhaps, towards +living, but it is still only one step removed from stagnation. They +have some interest in an occurrence, but how that occurrence happened, +and what will result from it does not exercise them in the least, and +these, which are knowledge and prophecy, are the only interesting +aspects of any event." + +"But," said I, "you have not told me why you sit for a full hour +staring at vacancy, and thumping on your knee with your hand?" + +She continued--. + +"Sometimes one meets certain people who have sufficient of the divine +ferment in their heads to be called alive: they are almost always men. +We fly to them as to our own people. We abase ourselves before them in +happy humility. We crave to be allowed to live near them in order that +we may be assured that everything in the world is not nonsense and +machinery--and then, what do we find--?" + +She paused, and turned a large fierce eye upon me. + +"I do not know," said I, and I endeavoured vainly to look everywhere +but at her eye. + +"We find always that they are married," said she, and, saying so, she +lapsed again to a tense and worried reflection. + +"You have not told me," I insisted gently, "why you peer earnestly into +space, and thump at intervals upon your knee with the heel of your +fist?" + +"These men," said she sternly, "are surrounded by their wives. They +are in gaol and their wives are their warders. You cannot go to them +without a permit. You may not speak to them without a listener. You +may not argue with them for fear of raising an alien and ridiculous +hostility. Scarcely can you even look at them without reproach.--How +then can we live, and how will the torch of life be kept alight?" + +"I do not know," I murmured. + +She turned her pale eye to me again. + +"I am not beautiful," said she. + +But there was just a tremor of doubt in her voice, so that the apparent +statement became packed with curiosity, and had all the quality of a +question. + +I did not shrug my shoulder nor raise an eyebrow-- + +"You are very nice," I replied. + +"I do not want to be beautiful," she continued severely. "Why should +I? I have no interest in such things. I am interested only in living, +and living is thinking; but I demand access to my fellows who are +alive. Perhaps, I did not pay those others enough attention. How +could I? They cannot think. They cannot speak. They make a +complicated verbal noise, but all I am able to translate from it is, +that a something called lip-salve can be bought in some particular shop +one penny cheaper than it can in a certain other shop. They will +twitter for hours about the way a piece of ribbon was stitched to a hat +which they saw in a tramcar. They agitate themselves wondering whether +a muff should be this size or that size?--I say, they depress me, and +if I do turn my back on them when men are present I am only acting +sensibly and justly. Why cannot they twitter to each other and let me +and other people alone?" + +She turned to me again-- + +"I do not know," said I meekly. + +"And," she continued, "the power they have; the amazing power they have +to annoy other folk. All kinds of sly impertinences, vulgar evasions, +and sneering misunderstandings. Why should such women be allowed to +take men into their captivity, to sequester, and gag, and restrain them +from those whom they would naturally be eager to meet? + +"What," she continued fiercely, "had my hat to do with that woman, or +my frock?" + +I nodded slowly and grievously, and repeated-- + +"What indeed?" + +"A hat," said she, "is something to cover one's head from the rain, and +a frock is something to guard one's limbs from inclement weather.--To +that extent I am interested in these things: but they would put a hat +on my mind, and a black cloth on my understanding." + +We sat in silence for a little time, while she surveyed the bleak +horizon as an eagle might. + +"And when I call at their houses," said she, "their servants say 'Not +at home,' a lie, you know, and they close their doors on me." + +She was silent again-- + +"I do not know what to do," said she. + +"Is that," said I, "the reason why you beat your lap with your hand, +and stare abroad like a famished eagle?" + +She turned quickly to me-- + +"What shall I do to open those doors?" said she. + +"If I happened to be you," I replied, "I would cut off my hair, I'd buy +a man's clothes and wear them always, I'd call myself Harry or Tom; and +then I'd go wherever I pleased, and meet whoever I wanted to meet?" + +She stared fixedly at herself in these garments, and under these +denominations-- + +"They would know I was not a man," said she gravely. + +I looked at her figure-- + +"No person in the world would ever guess it," said I. + +She arose from her seat. She clutched her reticule to her breast-- + +"I'll do it," said she, and she stalked gauntly across the fields. + + + + +THE THREEPENNY-PIECE + +When Brien O'Brien died, people said that it did not matter very much, +because he would have died young in any case. He would have been +hanged, or his head would have been split in two halves with a hatchet, +or he would have tumbled down the cliff when he was drunk and been +smashed into jelly. Something like that was due to him, and everybody +likes to see a man get what he deserves to get. + +But, as ethical writs cease to run when a man is dead, the neighbours +did not stay away from his wake. They came, and they said many +mitigating things across the body with the bandaged jaws and the sly +grin, and they reminded each other of this and that queer thing which +he had done, for his memory was crusted over with stories of wild, +laughable things, and other things which were wild but not laughable. + +Meanwhile, he was dead, and one was at liberty to be a trifle sorry for +him. Further, he belonged to the O'Brien nation, a stock to whom +reverence was due. A stock not easily forgotten. The historic memory +could reconstruct forgotten glories of station and battle, of terrible +villainy and terrible saintliness, the pitiful, valorous, slow descent +to the degradation which was not yet wholly victorious. A great stock! +The O'Neills remembered it. The O'Tools and the MacSweeneys had +stories by the hundred of love and hate. The Burkes and the Geraldines +and the new strangers had memories also. + +His family was left in the poorest way, but they were used to that, for +he had kept them as poor as he left them, or found them, for that +matter. They had shaken hands with Charity so often that they no +longer disliked the sallow-faced lady, and, so, certain small gifts +made by the neighbours were accepted, not very thankfully, but very +readily. These gifts were almost always in kind. A few eggs. A bag +of potatoes. A handful of meal. A couple of twists of tea--such like. + +One of the visitors, however, moved by an extraordinary dejection, +slipped a silver threepenny-piece into the hand of Brien's little +daughter, Sheila, aged four years, and later on she did not like to ask +for it back again. + +Little Sheila had been well trained by her father. She knew exactly +what should be done with money, and so, when nobody was looking, she +tip-toed to the coffin and slipped the threepenny-piece into Brien's +hand. That hand had never refused money when it was alive, it did not +reject it either when it was dead. + +They buried him the next day. + +He was called up for judgment the day after, and made his appearance +with a miscellaneous crowd of wretches, and there he again received +what was due to him. He was removed protesting and struggling to the +place decreed. + +"Down," said Rhadamanthus, pointing with his great hand, and down he +went. + +In the struggle he dropped the threepenny-piece, but he was so bustled +and heated that he did not observe his loss. He went down, far down, +out of sight, out of remembrance, to a howling, black gulf with others +of his unseen kind. + +A young seraph, named Cuchulain, chancing to pass that way shortly +afterwards, saw the threepenny-piece peeping brightly from the rocks, +and he picked it up. + +He looked at it in astonishment. He turned it over and over, this way +and that way. Examined it at the stretch of his arm, and peered +minutely at it from two inches distance-- + +"I have never in my life seen anything so beautifully wrought," said +he, and, having stowed it in his pouch along with some other trinkets, +he strolled homewards again through the massy gates. + +It was not long until Brien discovered his loss, and, suddenly, through +the black region, his voice went mounting and brawling. + +"I have been robbed," he yelled. "I have been robbed in heaven!" + +Having begun to yell he did not stop. Sometimes he was simply angry +and made a noise. Sometimes he became sarcastic and would send his +query swirling upwards-- + +"Who stole the threepenny-bit?" he roared. He addressed the +surrounding black space-- + +"Who stole the last threepenny-bit of a poor man?" + +Again and again his voice pealed upwards. The pains of his habitation +lost all their sting for him. His mind had nourishment and the heat +within him vanquished the fumes without. He had a grievance, a +righteous cause, he was buoyed and strengthened, nothing could silence +him. They tried ingenious devices, all kinds of complicated things, +but he paid no heed, and the tormentors were in despair. + +"I hate these sinners from the kingdom of Kerry," said the Chief +Tormentor, and he sat moodily down on his own circular saw; and that +worried him also, for he was clad only in a loin cloth. + +"I hate the entire Clan of the Gael," said he; "why cannot they send +them somewhere else?" and then he started practising again on Brien. + +It was no use. Brien's query still blared upwards like the sound of +the great trump itself. It wakened and rung the rocky caverns, +screamed through fissure and funnel, and was battered and slung from +pinnacle to crag and up again. Worse! his companions in doom became +interested and took up the cry, until at last the uproar became so +appalling that the Master himself could not stand it. + +"I have not had a wink of sleep for three nights," said that harassed +one, and he sent a special embassy to the powers. + +Rhadamanthus was astonished when they arrived. His elbow was leaning +on his vast knee, and his heavy head rested on a hand that was acres +long, acres wide. + +"What is all this about?" said he. + +"The Master cannot go to sleep," said the spokesman of the embassy, and +he grinned as he said it, for it sounded queer even to himself. + +"It is not necessary that he should sleep," said Rhadamanthus. "I have +never slept since time began, and I will never sleep until time is +over. But the complaint is curious. What has troubled your master?" + +"Hell is turned upside down and inside out," said the fiend. "The +tormentors are weeping like little children. The principalities are +squatting on their hunkers doing nothing. The orders are running here +and there fighting each other. The styles are leaning against walls +shrugging their shoulders, and the damned are shouting and laughing and +have become callous to torment." + +"It is not my business," said the judge. + +"The sinners demand justice," said the spokesman. + +"They've got it," said Rhadamanthus, "let them stew in it." + +"They refuse to stew," replied the spokesman, wringing his hands. + +Rhadamanthus sat up. + +"It is an axiom in law," said he, "that however complicated an event +may be, there can never be more than one person at the extreme bottom +of it. Who is the person?" + +"It is one Brien of the O'Brien nation, late of the kingdom of Kerry. +A bad one! He got the maximum punishment a week ago." + +For the first time in his life Rhadamanthus was disturbed. He +scratched his head, and it was the first time he had ever done that +either. + +"You say he got the maximum," said Rhadamanthus, "then it's a fix! I +have damned him for ever, and better or worse than that cannot be done. +It is none of my business," said he angrily, and he had the deputation +removed by force. + +But that did not ease the trouble. The contagion spread until ten +million billions of voices were chanting in unison, and uncountable +multitudes were listening between their pangs. + +"Who stole the threepenny-bit? Who stole the threepenny-bit?" + +That was still their cry. Heaven rang with it as well as hell. Space +was filled with that rhythmic tumult. Chaos and empty Nox had a new +discord added to their elemental throes. Another memorial was drafted +below, showing that unless the missing coin was restored to its owner +hell would have to close its doors. There was a veiled menace in the +memorial also, for Clause 6 hinted that if hell was allowed to go by +the board heaven might find itself in some jeopardy thereafter. + +The document was dispatched and considered. In consequence a +proclamation was sent through all the wards of Paradise, calling on +whatever person, archangel, seraph, cherub, or acolyte had found a +threepenny-piece since midday of the tenth of August then instant, that +the same person, archangel, seraph, cherub, or acolyte, should deliver +the said threepenny-piece to Rhadamanthus at his Court, and should +receive in return a free pardon and a receipt. + +The coin was not delivered, + +That young seraph, Cuchulain, walked about like a person who was +strange to himself. He was not tormented: he was angry. He frowned, +he cogitated and fumed. He drew one golden curl through his fingers +until it was lank and drooping; save the end only, that was still a +ripple of gold. He put the end in his mouth and strode moodily chewing +it. And every day his feet turned in the same direction--down the long +entrance boulevard, through the mighty gates, along the strip of carved +slabs, to that piled wilderness where Rhadamanthus sat monumentally. + +Here delicately he went, sometimes with a hand outstretched to help his +foothold, standing for a space to think ere he jumped to a further +rock, balancing himself for a moment ere he leaped again. So he would +come to stand and stare gloomily upon the judge. + +He would salute gravely, as was meet, and say, "God bless the work"; +but Rhadamanthus never replied, save by a nod, for he was very busy. + +Yet the judge did observe him, and would sometimes heave ponderous lids +to where he stood, and so, for a few seconds, they regarded each other +in an interval of that unceasing business. + +Sometimes for a minute or two the young seraph Cuchulain would look +from the judge to the judged as they crouched back or strained forward, +the good and the bad all in the same tremble of fear, all unknowing +which way their doom might lead. They did not look at each other. +They looked at the judge high on his ebon throne, and they could not +look away from him. There were those who knew, guessed clearly their +doom; abashed and flaccid they sat, quaking. There were some who were +uncertain--rabbit-eyed these, not less quaking than the others, biting +at their knuckles as they peeped upwards. There were those hopeful, +yet searching fearfully backwards in the wilderness of memory, chasing +and weighing their sins; and these last, even when their bliss was +sealed and their steps set on an easy path, went faltering, not daring +to look around again, their ears strained to catch a--"Halt, miscreant! +this other is your way!" + +So, day by day, he went to stand near the judge; and one day +Rhadamanthus, looking on him more intently, lifted his great hand and +pointed-- + +"Go you among those to be judged," said he. + +For Rhadamanthus knew. It was his business to look deep into the heart +and the mind, to fish for secrets in the pools of being. + +And the young seraph Cuchulain, still rolling his golden curl between +his lips, went obediently forward and set down his nodding plumes +between two who whimpered and stared and quaked. + +When his turn came, Rhadamanthus eyed him intently for a long time-- + +"Well!" said Rhadamanthus. + +The young seraph Cuchulain blew the curl of gold away from his mouth-- + +"Findings are keepings," said he loudly, and he closed his mouth and +stared very impertinently at the judge. + +"It is to be given up," said the judge. + +"Let them come and take it from me," said the seraph Cuchulain. And +suddenly (for these things are at the will of spirits) around his head +the lightnings span, and his hands were on the necks of thunders. + +For the second time in his life Rhadamanthus was disturbed, again he +scratched his head-- + +"It's a fix," said he moodily. But in a moment he called to those +whose duty it was-- + +"Take him to this side," he roared. + +And they advanced. But the seraph Cuchulain swung to meet them, and +his golden hair blazed and shrieked; and the thunders rolled at his +feet, and about him a bright network that hissed and stung--and those +who advanced turned haltingly backwards and ran screaming. + +"It's a fix," said Rhadamanthus; and for a little time he stared +menacingly at the seraph Cuchulain. + +But only for a little time. Suddenly he put his hands on the rests of +his throne and heaved upwards his terrific bulk. Never before had +Rhadamanthus stood from his ordained chair. He strode mightily forward +and in an instant had quelled that rebel. The thunders and lightnings +were but moonbeams and dew on that stony carcass. He seized the seraph +Cuchulain, lifted him to his breast as one lifts a sparrow, and tramped +back with him-- + +"Fetch me that other," said he, sternly, and he sat down. + +Those whose duty it was sped swiftly downwards to find Brien of the +O'Brien nation; and while they were gone, all in vain the seraph +Cuchulain crushed flamy barbs against that bosom of doom. Now, indeed, +his golden locks were drooping and his plumes were broken and tossed; +but his fierce eye still glared courageously against the nipple of +Rhadamanthus. + +Soon they brought Brien. He was a sight of woe--howling, naked as a +tree in winter, black as a tarred wall, carved and gashed, tattered in +all but his throat, wherewith, until one's ears rebelled, he bawled his +one demand. + +But the sudden light struck him to a wondering silence, and the sight +of the judge holding the seraph Cuchulain like a limp flower to his +breast held him gaping-- + +"Bring him here," said Rhadamanthus. + +And they brought him to the steps of the throne-- + +"You have lost a medal!" said Rhadamanthus. "This one has it." + +Brien looked straitly at the seraph Cuchulain. + +Rhadamanthus stood again, whirled his arm in an enormous arc, jerked, +and let go, and the seraph Cuchulain went swirling through space like a +slung stone-- + +"Go after him, Kerryman," said Rhadamanthus, stooping; and he seized +Brien by the leg, whirled him wide and out and far; dizzy, dizzy as a +swooping comet, and down, and down, and down. + +Rhadamanthus seated himself. He motioned with his hand-- + +"Next," said he, coldly. + +Down went the seraph Cuchulain, swirling in wide tumbles, scarcely +visible for quickness. Sometimes, with outstretched hands, he was a +cross that dropped plumb. Anon, head urgently downwards, he dived +steeply. Again, like a living hoop, head and heels together, he spun +giddily. Blind, deaf, dumb, breathless, mindless; and behind him Brien +of the O'Brien nation came pelting and whizzing. + +What of that journey! Who could give it words? Of the suns that +appeared and disappeared like winking eyes. Comets that shone for an +instant, went black and vanished. Moons that came, and stood, and were +gone. And around all, including all, boundless space, boundless +silence; the black, unmoving void--the deep, unending quietude, through +which they fell with Saturn and Orion, and mildly-smiling Venus, and +the fair, stark-naked moon and the decent earth wreathed in pearl and +blue. From afar she appeared, the quiet one, all lonely in the void. +As sudden as a fair face in a crowded street. Beautiful as the sound +of falling waters. Beautiful as the sound of music in a silence. Like +a white sail on a windy sea. Like a green tree in a solitary place. +Chaste and wonderful she was. Flying afar. Flying aloft like a joyous +bird when the morning breaks on the darkness and he shrills sweet +tidings. She soared and sang. Gently she sang to timid pipes and +flutes of tender straw and murmuring, distant strings. A song that +grew and swelled, gathering to a multitudinous, deep-thundered harmony, +until the over-burdened ear failed before the appalling uproar of her +ecstasy, and denounced her. No longer a star! No longer a bird! A +plumed and horned fury! Gigantic, gigantic, leaping and shrieking +tempestuously, spouting whirlwinds of lightning, tearing gluttonously +along her path, avid, rampant, howling with rage and terror she leaped, +dreadfully she leaped and flew. . . . + +Enough! They hit the earth--they were not smashed, there was that +virtue in them. They hit the ground just outside the village of +Donnybrook where the back road runs to the hills; and scarcely had they +bumped twice when Brien of the O'Brien nation had the seraph Cuchulain +by the throat-- + +"My threepenny-bit," he roared, with one fist up-- + +But the seraph Cuchulain only laughed-- + +"That!" said he. "Look at me, man. Your little medal dropped far +beyond the rings of Saturn." + +And Brien stood back looking at him--He was as naked as Brien was. He +was as naked as a stone, or an eel, or a pot, or a new-born babe. He +was very naked. + +So Brien of the O'Brien nation strode across the path and sat down by +the side of a hedge-- + +"The first man that passes this way," said he, "will give me his +clothes, or I'll strangle him." + +The seraph Cuchulain walked over to him-- + +"I will take the clothes of the second man that passes," said he, and +he sat down. + + + + + BRIGID + + (AFTER THE IRISH) + + Do not marry, Breed, asthore! + That old man whose head is hoar + As the winter, but instead + Mate with some young curly-head; + He will give to you a child, + He will never leave your side, + And at morning when you wake + Kiss for kiss will give and take. + + I wish that I had died, I do, + Before I gave my love to you; + Love so lasting that it will + While I live be with you still: + And for it what do I get? + Pain and trouble and regret, + The terrors of the aspen-tree + Which the wind shakes fearfully. + + If this country could be seen + As it ought--then you had been + Living in a castle grand + With the ladies of the land: + The friend and foe, the gael and gall, + Would be cheering, one and all, + For yourself, and, this is true, + I would be along with you. + + You promised, 'twas a lie, I see, + When you said you'd come to me + At the sheep-cote; I was there, + And I whistled on the air, + And I gave our settled call-- + But you were not there at all! + There was nothing anywhere + But lambs and birds and sunny air + + When it is dark you pass me by, + And when the sun is in the sky + You pass me also--night or day + You look away, you walk away! + But if you would come to me, + And say the word of courtesy, + I would close the door, and then + I'd never let you out again. + + But do not marry, Breed, asthore! + That old man; his heart is hoar + As his head is: you can see + Winter gripping at his knee: + His eyes and ears are blear and dim, + How can you expect of him + To see or hear or pleasure you + Half as well as I would do? + + + + +THREE YOUNG WIVES + +I + +She was about to be a mother for the second time, and the fear which is +the portion of women was upon her. In a little while she would be in +the toils, and she hated and feared physical pain with a great hatred +and a great fear. But there was something further which distressed her. + +She was a soft, babyish creature, downy and clinging, soft-eyed and +gentle, the beggar folk had received gifts at her hand, the dogs knew +of her largesse. Men looked on her with approval, and women liked her. +Her husband belonged to the type known as "fine men," tall, +generously-proportioned, with the free and easy joviality which is so +common in Ireland. He was born a boy and he would never grow out of +that state. The colour of his hair or the wrinkles on his cheek would +not have anything to do with his age, for time was powerless against +the richness of his blood. He would still be a boy when he was dying +of old age; but if protestations, kisses and homage were any criterion +then the fact that he loved his wife was fixed beyond any kind of doubt. + +But he did not love her.--He was as changeable as the weather of his +country. Swift to love he was equally swift to forget. His passions +were of primitive intensity, but they were not steadfast. He clutched +with both hands at the present and was surprised and irritated by the +fact that he could in nowise get away from the past: the future he did +not care a rap about. Nobody does: there is, indeed, no such thing as +the future, there is only the possibility of it, but the past and the +present are facts not to be gotten away from. What we have done and +what we are doing are things which stamp us, mould us, live with us and +after us: what we will do cannot be counted on, has no part in us, has +only a problematical existence, and can be interfered with, hindered, +nullified or amplified by the thousand unmanageable accidents of +futurity. + +He had married thanking God from a full heart for His goodness, and +believing implicitly that he had plucked the very Flower of Womanhood, +and the Heart of the World, and, maybe, he had.--There are many Flowers +of Womanhood, all equally fragrant, and the Heart of the World can beat +against the breast of any man who loves a woman. + +Some time previously their little boy had contracted small-pox, and his +mother, nursing him, took it from him. When they recovered her beauty +was gone. The extraordinary bloom which had made her cheek a shrine to +worship and marvel at was destroyed for ever, while, by a curious +chance, the boy was unmarked. + +Now the only love which he had to give was a physical love. He did not +love a woman, he loved the husk. Of the woman herself he knew nothing +and cared less. He had never sought to know his wife, never tried to +pierce beneath her beauty and discover where the woman lived and what +she was like at home. Indeed, he knew less of his wife than his +servants did, and by little and little she had seen how the matter +stood. She had plucked the heart from his mystery and read him to the +bones, while remaining herself intact. But she held him still, +although by the most primitive and fragile of bonds, by the magnetism +of her body, the shining of her eyes, the soft beauty of her cheeks; +and, behold! she was undone. The disease had stamped on her face, and, +in the recoil, had stamped on her husband's love. + +How many nights of solitary tears she had known! she alone could count +them, a heavy knowledge. How many slights, shrinkings, coldnesses she +had discerned! the tale of them was hot in her brain, the index heavy +on her heart. + +She knew her loss on the day that her husband looked at her after her +recovery when all fear of infection had passed--the stare, the flush, +the angry disgust. Her eyes were cameras. She had only to close them +and she could see again in dismal procession those dismal details. + +And now, as she lay helpless on the bed, she watched him. She was +racked with pain, and he was mumbling that it would be all right again +in a little time. "A week from now," said he, "and you will have +forgotten all about it." + +But she, looking at him with fearful eyes, traced this sentence at the +back of his brain, "I hope that she will die," and the life within her +which had been sown in happiness and love, and had grown great through +misery and tears was now beating at the gates of entrance. . . . She +might die: so many people die in labour, and she was not strong. With +a new clairvoyant gaze she saw Death standing by the bed, hooded, +cloaked and sombre; his eyes were fixed on her and they were peaceful +and kindly eyes. Had there been nothing else to care for she would +have gone gladly to the Dark One; but there remained her little son. +What heart was he to rest on when she was gone? Whose arms could open +so widely as the mother's when he fled from the terrible things which +haunt Babyland?--it was an arrow in her heart. + +She knew well that her husband would marry again. He was of those men +who are inveterate husbands--and that new woman!--Who was she? What +was she like? What would be her attitude towards a motherless child? +towards her little one? She would be kindly at first, little doubt of +that, but afterwards, when her own children came, what would become of +the child of a husband's first wife? . . . + +She stared down vistas of sorrow. She was a woman, and she knew women. +She saw the other little ones, strangers to her, cared for and loved, +all their childish troubles the centre of maternal interest and debate, +while her boy slunk through a lonely, pathetic childhood, frightened, +repressed, perhaps beaten, because he was not of the brood. . . . + +She saw these things as she lay looking at her husband, and she +believed they would come to pass if she died. + +And in the night time, when the stars were hidden behind the window +curtains, by the light of a lamp that fell on toiling, anxious people, +in a hospital-like atmosphere of pain and clamour she did die. + + +II + +It was believed long ago in the ancient kingdom of Erinn that it was +death to be a poet, death to love a poet, and death to mock a poet. So +the Gael said, and, in that distant time, the people of the Gael were a +wise people, holding the ancient knowledge, and they honoured the poet +and feared him, for his fostering was among the people of the Shee, and +his curse was quickened with the authority of the gods. Even lately +the people feared the poets and did them reverence, although the New +Ignorance (known humorously as Education) was gradually strangling the +life out of Wisdom, and was setting up a different and debased standard +of mental values. There was a lady once and she scorned a poet, +wittingly and with malice, and it was ill for her in the sequel, for +the gods saw to it. + +She was very beautiful--"The finest girl in three counties, sir," said +her father: but he might have been prejudiced in favour of his own, and +he had been known to speak of himself as "the finest man in Ireland, +and you know what that means, sir." Further, his dog was "the greatest +dog that ever ratted in the universe." Whatever he owned was not only +good, it was great and unique, and whatever he did not own had, in his +opinion, very little to recommend it. + +But his daughter was beautiful. When the male eye encountered her it +was in no haste to look away. When the female eye lit on her it was, +and the owner of the female eye, having sniffed as was proper, went +home and tried to do up her hair or her complexion in the like +manner--as was also proper. A great many people believe (and who will +quarrel with their verities) that beauty is largely a matter of craft +and adjustment.--Such women are beautiful with a little +difficulty--they pursue loveliness, run it to earth in a shop, obtain +it with a certain amount of minted metal, and reincarnate themselves +from a box.--They deserve all the success which they undoubtedly +obtain. There are other women who are beautiful by accident--such as, +the cunning disposition of a dimple, the abilities of a certain kind of +smile, the possession of a charming voice--for, indeed, an ugly woman +with a beautiful voice is a beautiful woman. But some women are +beautiful through the spendthrift generosity of nature, and of this +last was she. Whatever of colour, line, or motion goes to the +construction of beauty that she was heiress to, and she knew it only +too well. + +A person who has something of his own making may properly be proud of +his possession, even if it is nothing more than a stamp album, but a +person who has been gifted by Providence or Fairy Godmothers should not +be conceited. A self-made man may be proud of his money, but his son +may not. Pride in what has been given freely to you is an empty pride, +and she was prouder of her beauty than a poet is of his odes--it was +her undoing in the end. + +She was so accustomed to the homage of men that one who failed to make +instant and humble obeisance to her proved himself to be either a very +vulgar person or else a miracle. Such folk were few, for the average +man bends as readily to beauty as a flower sways to the wind, or the +sea to the touch of the moon. + +Before she was twenty years of age she had loomed in the eye of every +male in her vicinity as the special female whom nature had built to his +exclusive measure. When she was twenty-one she had withstood the +matrimonial threats of half the male population of Ireland, and she +knew how every social grade (there are not many of them) of Irish life +made love, for that was the only thing they were able to do while they +were near her. From the farmer with a spade in his fist to the +landlord with a writ in his agent's pocket, all sang the same song, the +sole difference being a matter of grammar; and, although young women +have big appetites in these cases, and great recuperative powers, she +was as tired of love and love-lorn swains as a young and healthy woman +can be, and then, suddenly, and to her own delighted consternation, she +did fall in love. + +The tantalising part of the whole matter was that she was unable to +formulate any good reason for falling in love with this particular +male. Her powers of observation (and they were as sharp as a cat's +tooth) pointed out that although he was a young man his head was +beginning to push out through his hair, and she had always considered +that a bald man was outside the pale of human interest. Furthermore, +his trousers bagged at the knees, perhaps the most lamentable mishap +that can descend on manly apparel.--They were often a little jagged at +the ends. She did not understand that trousers such as these were the +correct usage, they were in the tradition: he was wearing "the bearded +breeches of the bard." He was a little weak on his legs, and his hands +sometimes got in his own way, but she said to herself with a smile, +"How different he is from other men!" + +What that difference consisted in got between her and her rest, there +was a crumb in her bed on the head of it. + +Meanwhile, he had not told her that he loved her, and she was strangely +anxious for news to that effect. Indeed, she sought confirmation of +her hopes as often as maidenly modesty permitted, which was pretty +frequent, for maidenly modesty has its diplomacy also; besides, has not +a reigning beauty liberty to pay court?--there are plenty of other +queens who have done it. + +He was a poet by profession, but his livelihood depended upon his +ability as a barrister. When she first saw him he was crossing a +street. Suddenly, in the centre of the road, he halted, with his toes +turned in, his fingers caressing his chin, and an expression of rapt +and abstracted melancholy on his visage, while he sought for the +missing, the transfiguring word. There was a sonnet in his eye and it +impeded his vision. Meanwhile, the wheeled traffic of the street +addressed language to him which was so vigorous as almost to be +poetical. She had pulled him from beneath a horse's head which a +frantic driver was endeavouring to pull the mouth from. The words of +the driver as he sailed away were--"Go home and die, you moonstruck, +gibbering, wobbling omadhaun," and she had thought that his description +was apt and eloquent. + +She saw him a second time, when her father took her for a visit to the +Four Courts. He was addressing the Court, and, while his language was +magnificent, the judge must have considered that his law was on +vacation, for he lost his cause. + +They met again in her own home. Her father knew him very well, and, +although they seldom met, he had that strong admiration for him which a +vigorous and overbearing personality sometimes extends to a shy and +unworldly friend-- + +"A perfect frost as a lawyer," he used to say, "but as a poet, sir, +Shakespeare is an ass beside him, and if any one asks you who said so, +tell them that I did, sir." + +He sat beside her at dinner and forgot her before the first course was +removed, and, later, when he knocked a glass off the table, he looked +at her as though she were responsible for the debris. + +He did not make love to her, a new and remarkable omission in her +experience of men, however bald, and while this was refreshing for a +time it became intolerable shortly. She challenged him, as a woman +can, with the flash of her eyes, the quick music of her laugh, but he +was marvelling at the width of the horizon, rapt in contemplation of +the distant mountains, observing how a flower poised and nodded on its +stalk, following the long, swooping flight of a bird or watching how +the moon tramped down on the stars. So far as she could see he was +unaware that her charms were of other than average significance-- + +"These poets are awful fools," said she angrily. + +But the task of awakening this landlocked nature was one which +presented many interesting features to her. She was really jealous +that he paid her no attention, and, being accustomed to the homage of +every male thing over fifteen years of age, she resented his +negligence, became interested in him, as every one is in the abnormal, +and when a woman becomes interested in a man she is unhappy until he +becomes interested in her. + +There had arrived, with the express intention of asking her to marry +him, another young gentleman. He had a light moustache and a fancy +waistcoat, both of which looked new. He was young, rich, handsome, and +sufficiently silly to make any woman wish to take charge of him, and +her father had told him to "go in and win, my boy, there's no one I'd +like better, sir," a very good heartener for a slightly dubious youth, +even though he may consider that the lady of his choice is watching +another man more intently than is pleasant. + +The young gentleman gripped, with careful frenzy, at his light, new +moustache, and growled as he watched the stalking. But the poet was +occupied and careless, and then, suddenly, it happened. What movement, +conscious or unconscious, opened his eyes one cannot say: the thing +seemed to be done without any preliminaries, and he was awakened and in +the toils. + +They had been reading poetry together, his poetry, and he was +expressing, more to himself than to her, how difficult and how +delightful it was to work with entire satisfaction within the "scanty +plot" of a sonnet. She was listening with bated breath, and answering +with an animation more than slightly tinged with ignorance, for she was +as little interested in the making of sonnets as in the making of +shoes.--Nobody is interested in the making of sonnets, not even poets. + +He fell silent after a space and sat gazing at the moon where it globed +out on the stillness, and she also became silent. Her nerves, she told +herself, were out of order. She was more used to dismissing than to +being dismissed and yet she seemed beaten. There was nothing further +that a girl could do. He cared no more about her than he did about +whatever woman cleaned his rooms. She was not angry, but a feeling of +weariness came upon her. (It is odd that one can be so in earnest when +one is in jest.) Once or twice she shook her head at the moon, and as +she stared, moody and quiet, it seemed that the moon had slid beyond +her vision and she was looking into great caverns of space, bursting +with blackness. Some horror of emptiness was reaching to roll her in +pits of murk, where her screams would be battered back on her tongue +soundless. + +With an effort she drew her eyes into focus again and turned them, +smiling bitterly, on her companion, and, lo, he was looking at her with +timid eyes, amazed eyes, and they spoke, for all their timidity, louder +than trumpets. She knew that look, who could mistake it? Here was +flame from the authentic fire. He was silent, but his breath came and +went hurriedly, and he was bending towards her, little by little he was +bending, his eyes, his whole body and soul yearning. + +Then she arose---- + +"It is getting a little cold," said she: "we had better go in." + +They went indoors silently. He was walking like a man just awakened +from a dream. While she!--her head was high. Where was her equal! +She frowned in the face of the moon and stars. She beat her small feet +upon the earth and called it slave. She had torn victory from nowhere. +A man's head swung at her girdle and she owned the blood that dripped, +and her heart tossed rapture and anthem, carol and paean to the air +around.--She had her hour. + +That night the other young gentleman whom any woman would like to take +charge of asked her to be his wife, and she consented gracefully, +slightly disarranging his nice, new moustache in the act of surrender. + +The next day the poet left the house pleading urgent briefs as an +excuse-- + +"You'll come to the wedding," cried her father, "or," laughing, "maybe, +you'll help us with the settlements, that's more in your line," and he +put an arm fondly about his daughter. She, regarding their visitor, +nestled to him and laughingly said-- + +"It would not be like my wedding at all if you stayed away. You must +write me an ode," and her eyes mocked him. + +He stood, looking at her for a moment, and his eyes mocked also, for +the poet knew by his gift what she had done, and he replied with +careless scorn-- + +"I will come with pleasure, and," with an emphasis she noted, "I will +dance at your wedding." So he laughed and marched away heart-whole. + +Then, disengaging her arm from her father's, she smiled and walked +slowly indoors, and as she walked there spread over her body a fierce +coldness, and when her husband sought her afterwards that wintry breast +chilled him, and he died: but the poet danced at her wedding, when her +eyes were timid and pleading, and frightened. + + +III + +She read the letter through twice, and then she stood for a few minutes +looking in front of her, with her arms hanging loosely by her sides, +and her foot tapping on the carpet. She was looking into the future +with the thoughtful gaze of one who has cut off all communication with +the past, and, with a strange feeling of detachment, she was wondering +how that future would reveal itself, and whether he. . .? She crossed +to the fireplace, sat down, and read the letter over again. + +Her husband had gone out that evening with a friend. In his usual +hit-or-miss fashion, he kissed his wife and asked her to settle his +tie. He was always asking her to do something, but he never did +anything for her.--It was, "Will you hand me the paper, like a good +girl?" and, "I say, dear, my pipe is stuffed, you might stick a hairpin +through it," or, "You might see, old lady, if there is a match +anywhere." Before their marriage she had been accustomed to men who +did things for her, and the change was sudden: likeable enough at +first-- + +. . . How red the fire is to-night! They must be sending better coal +than we usually get--there is not a single dark spot in it, and how the +shape continually changes! Now it is a deep cave with stalactites +hanging from the roof, and little swelling hillocks on the floor, and, +over all, a delicate, golden glow surging and fading. The blue flame +on the top that flits and flickers like a will-o'-the-wisp is gas, I +suppose--I wonder how they extract it. . . . I wonder will he be sorry +when he comes home, and finds. . . . Perhaps his friend will be +sufficient for him then. . . . It is curious to think of oneself as a +piece of animated furniture, a dumb waiter, always ready when required, +and decently out of sight when not wanted--not dumb, though! He cannot +say I failed to talk about it: but, of course, that is nagging and bad +temper, and "making yourself ridiculous for nothing, my dear." +Nothing! I warned him over and over again; but he must have company. +He would be stifled unless he went among men now and again--"Male +company is a physical necessity for men, my dear." I suppose women do +not need any other company than that of their husbands, and they must +not ask too much of that. . . . What strange, careless, hopeful +creatures they are, and how they cease to value what they have got! +Does the value rise again when it is gone, I wonder? . . . Out all +day, and he cannot understand why I ask him to stay with me at night. +"A man wants air, sweetheart." A woman does not, of course--she would +not have the cheek to want anything: there is something not "nice" +about a woman wanting anything. Do all men stifle in the air their +wives have breathed? If I ask him "do you love me still?" he replies, +"of course, do you mind if I run out for an hour or two, dear." One +will ask questions, of course. . . . A kiss in the morning, another at +night, and, for Heaven's sake, don't bother me in the interval: that is +marriage from a man's point of view. Do they really believe that women +are alive? Is matrimony always a bondage to them? Are all women's +lives so lonely? Are their wishes neglected, their attempts to think +laughed at, their pride stricken?--I wonder. . . . And he did love me, +I know that: but if he has forgotten I must not remember it. He could +not see enough of me then: and the things he said, and does not +remember--I was a wonder that the world could not equal--it is +laughable.--A look from me was joy, a word delight, a touch ecstasy. +He would run to the ends of the earth to gratify a whim of mine, and +life without me was not worth living. . . . If I would only love him! +If I could only bring myself to care for him a little--he was too +humble, too unworthy to imagine--and so forth, and so forth; and it was +all true then. Now I am some one who waits upon him. He wants this +and that, and asks me for it. He has cut his finger and shouts for me +to bind it up, and I must be terribly concerned about it; somehow, he +will even manage to blame me for his cut finger. He cannot sleep in +the night, so I must awaken also and listen to his complaint. He is +sick, and the medicine tastes nasty; I am to understand that if the +medicine tastes nasty I am responsible for it--I should not have given +him anything nasty: he is surprised: he trusted me not to do such a +thing to him. He turns to me like a child when he has any . . . he +turns to me like a child and trusts . . . he turns to me . . . like a +child. . . . + +The sound of a horse's hooves came to her, and she arose from her chair +with frightened haste. She looked swiftly at the clock, and then stood +listening in a rigid attitude, with a face that grew white and peaked, +and flushed and paled again. The car came swiftly nearer and stopped a +little way from the house. Then a foot crunched the gravel, and her +desperate eyes went roving quickly about the room as though she were +looking for a place to hide in. Next, after a little interval of +silence, a pebble struck the window. She stood for a moment staring at +the window and then ran to it, swung open a pane of glass, and, leaning +out, she called in a high, strained voice, "I will not go." Then, +closing the window again, she ran back to the fireplace, crouched down +on the rug and pushed her fingers into her ears. + +Her husband came home before eleven o'clock, brushed the wraith of a +kiss half an inch from her lips, and asked was there anything nice for +supper? The supper things were already on the table, and, after +tasting a mouthful-- + +"Who cooked this?" said he. + +She was watching him intently-- + +"The girl did," she replied. + +"I knew it," said he angrily, "it's beastly: you might have done it +yourself when you were not busy; a lot you care about what I like." + +"I will do it to-morrow," she replied quietly. + +"Yes do," said he, "there is no one can cook like you." + +And she, still watching him intently, suddenly began to laugh-- + +He leaped up from the table and, after a stare of indignant +astonishment, he stalked off to bed-- + +"You are always giggling about nothing," said he, and he banged the +door. + + + + +THE HORSES + +He was tall and she was short. He was bulky, promising to be fat. She +was thin, and, with a paring here and there, would have been skinny. +His face was sternly resolute, solemn indeed, hers was prim, and +primness is the most everlasting, indestructible trait of humanity. It +can outface the Sphinx. It is destructible only by death. Whoever has +married a prim woman must hand over his breeches and his purse, he will +collect postage stamps in his old age, he will twiddle his thumbs and +smile when the visitor asks him a question, he will grow to dislike +beer, and will admit and assert that a man's place is the home--these +things come to pass as surely as the procession of the seasons. + +It may be asked why he had married her, and it would be difficult to +find an answer to that question. The same query might be put to almost +any couple, for (and it is possibly right that it should be so) we do +not marry by mathematics, but by some extraordinary attraction which is +neither entirely sexual nor mental. Something other than these, +something as yet uncharted by psychology, is the determining factor. +It may be that the universal, strange chemistry of nature, planning +granite and twig, ant and onion, is also ordering us more imperatively +and more secretly than we are aware. + +He had always been a hasty creature. He never had any brains, and had +never felt the lack of them. He was one of those men who are called +"strong," because of their imperfect control over themselves. His +appetites and his mental states ruled him. He was impatient of any +restraint; whatever he wanted to do he wanted urgently to do and would +touch no alternatives. He had the robust good humour which will +cheerfully forgive you to-morrow for the wrongs he has done you to-day. +He bore no malice to any one on earth except those who took their +medicine badly. Meek people got on very well with him because they +behaved themselves, but he did not like them to believe they would +inherit the earth. + +Some people marry because other people have done so. It is in the air, +like clothing and art and not eating with a knife. He, of course, got +married because he wanted to, and the singular part of it was that he +did not mate with a meek woman. Perhaps he thought she was meek, for +before marriage there is a habit of deference on both sides which is +misleading and sometimes troublesome. + +From the beginning of their marriage he had fought against his wife +with steadiness and even ferocity. Scarcely had they been wed when her +gently-repressive hand was laid upon him, and, like a startled horse, +he bounded at the touch into freedom--that is, as far as the limits of +the matrimonial rope would permit. Of course he came back again--there +was the rope, and the unfailing, untiring hand easing him to the way he +was wanted to go. + +There was no fighting against that. Or, at least, it did not seem that +fighting was any use. One may punch a bag, but the bag does not mind, +and at last one grows weary of unproductive quarrelling. One shrugs +one's shoulders, settles to the collar, and accepts whatever destiny +the gods, in their wisdom, have ordained. Is life the anvil upon which +the gods beat out their will? It is not so. The anvil is matter, the +will of the gods is life itself, urging through whatever torment to +some identity which it can only surmise or hope for; and the one order +to life is that it shall not cease to rebel until it has ceased to +live; when, perhaps, it can take up the shaping struggle in some other +form or some other place. + +But he had almost given in. Practically he had bowed to the new order. +Domestic habits were settling about him thick as cobwebs, and as +clinging. His feet were wiped on the mat when he came in. His hat was +hung on the orthodox projection. His kiss was given at the stated +time, and lasted for the regulation period. The chimney-corner claimed +him and got him. The window was his outlook on life. Beyond the hall +door were foreign lands inhabited by people who were no longer of his +kind. The cat and the canary, these were his familiars, and his wife +was rapidly becoming his friend. + +Once a day he trod solemnly forth on the designated walk-- + +"Be back before one o'clock," said the voice of kind authority, "lunch +will be ready." + +"Won't you be back before two?" said that voice, "the lawn has to be +rolled." + +"Don't stay out after three," the voice entreated, "we are going to +visit Aunt Kate." + +And at one and two and three o'clock he paced urgently wifeward. He +ate the lunch that was punctually ready. He rolled the inevitable +lawn. He trod sturdily to meet the Aunt Kate and did not quail, and +then he went home again. One climbed to bed at ten o'clock, one was +gently spoken to until eleven o'clock, and then one went to sleep. + +On a day she entrusted him with a sum of money, and requested that he +should go down to the town and pay at certain shops certain bills, the +details whereof she furnished to him on paper. + +"Be back before three o'clock," said the good lady, "for the Fegans are +coming to tea. You need not take your umbrella, it won't rain, and you +ought to leave your pipe behind, it doesn't look nice. Bring some +cigarettes instead, and your walking-stick if you like, and be sure to +be back before three." + +He pressed his pipe into a thing on the wall which was meant for pipes, +put his cigarette-case into his pocket, and took his walking-stick in +his hand. + +"You did not kiss me good-bye," said she gently. + +So he returned and did that, and then he went out. + +It was a delicious day. The sun was shining with all its might. One +could see that it liked shining, and hoped everybody enjoyed its art. +If there were birds about anywhere it is certain they were singing. In +this suburb, however, there were only sparrows, but they hopped and +flew, and flew and hopped, and cocked their heads sideways and chirped +something cheerful, but possibly rude, as one passed. They were busy +to the full extent of their beings, playing innocent games with happy +little flies, and there was not one worry among a thousand of them. + +There was a cat lying on a hot window-ledge. She was looking drowsily +at the sparrows, and any one could see that she loved them and wished +them well. + +There was a dog stretched across a doorway. He was very quiet, but he +was not in the least bored. He was taking a sun-bath, and he was +watching the cat. So steadily did he observe her that one discerned at +a glance he was her friend, and would protect her at any cost. + +There was a small boy who held in his left hand a tin can and a piece +of string. With his right hand he was making affectionate gestures to +the dog. He loved playing with animals, and he always rewarded their +trust in him. + +Our traveller paced slowly onwards, looking at his feet as he went. He +noticed with a little dismay that he could not see as much of his legs +as he thought he should see. There was a slight but nicely-shaped +curve between him and his past-- + +"I am getting fat," said he to himself, and the reflection carried him +back to the morning mirror-- + +"I am getting a bit bald, too," said he, and a quiet sadness took +possession of him. + +But he reassured himself. One does get fat. "Every one gets fat," +said he, "after he gets married." He reviewed his friends and +acquaintances, and found that this was true, and he bowed before an +immutable decree. + +"One does get bald," quoth he. "Everybody gets bald. The wisest +people in the world lose their hair. Kings and generals, rich people +and poor people, they are all bald! It is not a disgrace," said he; +and he trod soberly forward in the sunshine. + +A young man caught up on him from behind, and strode past. He was +whistling. His coat-tails were lifted and his hands were thrust in his +pockets. His elbows jerked to left and right as he marched. + +"A fellow oughtn't to swagger about like that," said our traveller. +"What does he want to tuck up his coat for, anyhow? It's not decent," +said he in a low voice. "It makes people laugh," said he. + +A girl came out of a shop near by and paced down in their direction. +She looked at the young man as they passed, and then she turned again, +a glance, no more, and looked after him without stopping her pace. She +came on. She had no pockets to stick her hands in, but she also was +swaggering. There was a left and right movement of her shoulders, an +impetus and retreat of her hips. Something very strong and yet +reticent about her surging body. She passed the traveller and went +down the road. + +"She did not look at me," said he, and his mind folded its hand across +its stomach, and sat down, while he went forward in the sunlight to do +his errands. + +He stopped to light a cigarette, and stood for a few minutes watching +the blue smoke drifting and thinning away on the air. While he stood a +man drove up with a horse and car. The car was laden with +groceries--packets of somebody's tea, boxes of somebody's chocolate, +bottles of beer and of mineral water, tins of boot blacking, and +parcels of soap; confectionery, and tinned fish, cheese, macaroni, and +jam. + +The man was beating the horse as he approached, and the traveller +looked at them both through a wreath of smoke. + +"I wonder," said he, "why that man beats his horse?" + +The driver was sitting at ease. He was not angry. He was not +impatient. There was nothing the matter with him at all. But he was +steadily beating the horse; not harshly, gently in truth. He beat the +horse without ill-will, almost without knowing he was doing it. It was +a sort of wrist exercise. A quick, delicate twitch of the whip that +caught the animal under the belly, always in the same place. It was +very skilful, but the driver was so proficient in his art that one +wondered why he had to practice at it any longer. And the horse did +not make any objection! Not even with his ears; they lay back to his +mane as he jogged steadily forward in the sunlight. His hooves were +shod with iron, but they moved with an unfaltering, humble regularity. +His mouth was filled with great, yellow teeth, but he kept his mouth +shut, and one could not see them. He did not increase or diminish his +pace under the lash; he jogged onwards, and did not seem to mind it. + +The reins were jerked suddenly, and the horse turned into the path and +stopped, and when he stood he was not any quieter than when he had been +moving. He did not raise his head or whisk his tail. He did not move +his ears to the sounds behind and on either side of him. He did not +paw and fumble with his feet. There was a swarm of flies about his +head; they moved along from the point of his nose to the top of his +forehead, but mostly they clustered in black, obscene patches about his +eyes, and through these patches his eyes looked out with a strange +patience, a strange mildness. He was stating a fact over and over to +himself, and he could not think of anything else-- + +"There are no longer any meadows in the world," said he. "They came in +the night and took away the green meadows, and the horses do not know +what to do." . . . Horse! Horse! Little horse! . . . You do not +believe me. There are those who have no whips. There are children who +would love to lift you in their arms and stroke your head. . . . + +The driver came again, he mounted to his seat, and the horse turned +carefully and trotted away. + +The man with the cigarette looked after them for a few minutes, and +then he also turned carefully, to do his errands. + +He reached the Railway Station and peered in at the clock. There were +some men in uniform striding busily about. Three or four people were +moving up the steps towards the ticket office. A raggedy man shook a +newspaper in his face, paused for half a second, and fled away bawling +his news. A red-faced woman pushed hastily past him. She was carrying +a big basket and a big baby. She was terribly engrossed by both, and +he wondered if she had to drop one which of them it would be. A short, +stout, elderly man was hoisting himself and a great leather portmanteau +by easy stages up the steps. He was very determined. He bristled at +everybody as at an enemy. He regarded inanimate nature as if he was +daring it to move. It would not be easy to make that man miss a train. +A young lady trod softly up the steps. She draped snowy garments about +her, but her ankles rebelled: whoever looked quickly saw them once, and +then she spoke very severely to them, and they hid themselves. It was +plain that she could scarcely control them, and that they would escape +again when she wasn't looking. A young man bounded up the steps; he +was too late to see them, and he looked as if he knew it. He stared +angrily at the girl, but she lifted her chin slightly and refused to +admit that he was alive. A very small boy was trying to push a large +india-rubber ball into his mouth, but his mouth was not big enough to +hold it, and he wept because of his limitations. He was towed along by +his sister, a girl so tall that one might say her legs reached to +heaven, and maybe they did. + +He looked again at the hour. It was one minute to two o'clock; and +then something happened. The whole white world became red. The oldest +seas in the world went suddenly lashing into storm. An ocean of blood +thundered into his head, and the noise of that primitive flood, roaring +from what prehistoric gulfs, deafened him at an instant. The waves +whirled his feet from under him. He went foaming up the steps, was +swept violently into the ticket office, and was swirled away like a +bobbing cork into the train. A guard tried to stop him, for the train +was already taking its pace, but one cannot keep out the tide with a +ticket-puncher. The guard was overwhelmed, caught in the backwash, and +swirled somewhere, anywhere, out of sight and knowledge. The train +gathered speed, went flying out of the station into the blazing +sunlight, picked up its heels and ran, and ran, and ran; the wind +leaped by the carriage window, shrieking with laughter; the wide fields +danced with each other, shouting aloud + +"The horses are coming again to the green meadows. Make way, make way +for the great, wild horses!" + +And the trees went leaping from horizon to horizon shrieking and +shrieking the news. + + + + + MISTRESS QUIET-EYES + + While I sit beside the window + I can hear the pigeons coo, + That the air is warm and blue, + And how well the young bird flew-- + Then I fold my arms and scold the heart + That thought the pigeons knew. + + While I sit beside the window + I can watch the flowers grow + Till the seeds are ripe and blow + To the fruitful earth below-- + Then I shut my eyes and tell my heart + The flowers cannot know. + + While I sit beside the window + I am growing old and drear; + Does it matter what I hear, + What I see, or what I fear? + I can fold my hands and hush my heart + That is straining to a tear. + + The earth is gay with leaf and flower, + The fruit is ripe upon the tree, + The pigeons coo in the swinging bower, + But I sit wearily + Watching a beggar-woman nurse + A baby on her knee. + + + + +THREE LOVERS WHO LOST + +I + +Young Mr. O'Grady was in love. It was the first time he had been in +love, and it was all sufficiently startling. He seemed to have leaped +from boyhood to manhood at a stroke, and the things which had pretended +to be of moment yesterday were to-day discovered to have only the very +meanest importance. Different affairs now occupied him. A little +while ago his cogitations had included, where he would walk to on the +next Sunday, whether his aunt in Meath Street would lend him the price +of a ticket for the coming Bank Holiday excursion, whether his brother +would be using his bicycle on Saturday afternoon, and whether the +packet of cigarettes which he was momently smoking contained as many +cigarettes as could be got elsewhere for two pence. + +These things were no longer noteworthy. Clothing had assumed an +importance he could scarcely have believed in. Boots, neck-ties, the +conduct of one's hat and of one's head, the progress of one's +moustache, one's bearing towards people in the street and in the house, +this and that social observance--all these things took on a new and +important dignity. He bought a walking-stick, a card-case, a purse, a +pipe with a glass bottom wherein one could observe one's own nicotine +inexorably accumulating.--He bought a book on etiquette and a pot of +paste for making moustaches grow in spite of providence, and one day he +insisted on himself drinking a half glass of whisky--it tasted sadly, +but he drank it without a grimace. Etiquette and whisky! these things +have to be done, and one might as well do them with an air. He was in +love, he was grown up, he was a man, and he lived fearlessly up to his +razor and his lady. + +From the book on etiquette he exhumed a miscellany of useful and +peculiar wisdom. Following information about the portage of knives and +forks at incredible dinners he discovered that a well-bred person +always speaks to the young lady's parents before he speaks to the young +lady. He straightened his shoulders.--It would be almost as bad, he +thought, as having to drink whisky, but if it had to be done why he +would not shrink from this any more than he had from that. He set +forth on the tingling errand. + +Mr. O'Reilly was a scrivener, a husband and a father. He made copies +of all kinds of documents for a living. He also copied maps. It has +been said that scriveners have to get drunk at least twice a week in +order to preserve their sanity; but the person whose miserable +employment is to draw copies of maps is more desperately environed than +an ordinary scrivener. It was Mr. O'Reilly's misfortune that he was +unable to get drunk. He disliked liquor, and, moreover, it disagreed +with him. He had, to paraphrase Lamb, toiled after liquor as other +people toil after virtue, but the nearer he got the less did he like +it. As a consequence of this enforced decency the ill-temper, which is +the normal state of scriveners, had surged and buzzed around him so +long that he had quite forgotten what a good temper was like.--It might +be said that he hated every one, not excepting his wife and daughter. +He could avoid other people, but these he could never escape from. +They wanted to talk to him when he wanted to be let alone. They +worried him with this and that domestic question or uproar. He would +gladly have sold them both as slaves to the Barbadoes or presented them +to the seraglio of any eastern potentate. There they were! and he +often gnashed his teeth and grinned at them in amazement because they +were there. + +On the evening when young Mr. O'Grady sallied forth to ask him for the +hand of his daughter in marriage he was sitting at supper with his +consort-- + +Mr. O'Reilly took the last slice of bread from under his wife's hand. +It was loot, so he ate it with an extra relish and his good lady +waddled away to get more bread from cupboard-- + +"Everything's a trouble," said she, as she cut the loaf. "Doesn't it +make you think of the hymn 'I'm but a stranger here, heaven is my +home'?" + +"No, ma'm," said her husband, "it does not. Where is Julia Elizabeth?" +and he daringly and skilfully abstracted the next slice of bread while +his wife was laying down the butter knife. + +"I wish," said she, as she reached for the knife again, "I wish you +would give me a chance, O'Reilly: you eat much quicker than I do, God +help me!" + +"I wish," rapped her husband fiercely, "that you would give a plain +answer to a plain question. Now then, ma'm, in two words, where is +that girl? My whole life seems to be occupied in asking that question, +and yours seems to be spent in dodging the answer to it." + +"I don't know," replied his wife severely, "and that's three words." + +"You don't know!" he looked around in helpless appeal and condemnation. +"What sort of an answer is that for a mother to give about her +daughter?" and under cover of his wrath he stole the next slice of +bread. + +His wife also became angry--she put her plate in her lap and sat up at +him-- + +"Don't barge me, man," said she. "A nice daughter to have to give such +an answer about. Leave me alone now for I'm not well, I say, on the +head of her. I never know where she does be. One night it's (she +endeavoured to reproduce her daughter's soprano) 'I am going to a +dance, mother, at the Durkins'----'" + +"Ha'penny hops!" said her husband fiercely. "Can't you cut me a bit of +bread!" + +"And another night, 'she wants to go out to see Mary Durkan.'" + +"I know her well, a big hat and no morals, a bankrupt's baggage." + +"And the night after she 'wants to go to the theatre, ma.'" + +"Dens of infamy," said he. "If I had my way I'd shut them all up and +put the actors in gaol, with their hamleting and gamyacting and +ha-ha'ing out of them." + +"I can't keep her in," said his wife, wringing her hands, "and I won't +try to any longer. I get a headache when I talk to her, so I do. Last +night when I mentioned about her going out with that Rorke man she +turned round as cool as you please and told me 'to shut up.' Her own +mother!" and she surveyed Providence with a condemnatory eye-- + +At this point her husband swung his long arm and arrested the slice of +bread in his wife's lap-- + +"If she spoke to me that way," he grinned, "I'll bet I'd astonish her." + +His wife looked in amazement from her lap to his plate, but she had +ability for only one quarrel at a time-- + +"And doesn't she talk to you like that? You never say a word to her +but she has a look in her eye that's next door to calling you a +fool.--I don't know where she is at all to-day." + +"What time did she go out?" + +"After breakfast this morning." + +"And now it's supper-time--ha! that's good! Can't you give me a bit of +bread, or do you want to eat the whole loaf yourself? Try to remember +that I do pay for my food." + +With an angry shake of the head his wife began to cut the loaf, and +continued speaking-- + +"'Where are you going to, Julia Elizabeth?' said I. 'Out,' said she, +and not another word could I get from her. Her own mother, mind you, +and her best clothes----" + +Mr. O'Reilly ate the last slice of bread and arose from the table. + +"I suppose," said he, "she is loafing about the streets with some young +puppy who has nothing of his own but a cigarette and a walking-stick, +and they both borrowed. I'll have a talk with her when she comes in, +and we'll see if she tells me to shut up." + +The door banged, the room shook, and Mrs. O'Reilly settled to her +frustrated tea, but her thoughts still ran on her daughter. + +It was at this point that, directed by love and etiquette, Mr. O'Grady +knocked at the door. Mrs. O'Reilly was again cutting the loaf in an +exasperation which was partly hunger and partly maternal, and, as she +cut, she communed with herself-- + +"As if," said she, "I haven't enough trouble trying to keep a cranky +man like her pa in good humour, without being plagued by Julia +Elizabeth"--she paused, for there was a knock at the door.--"If," said +she to the door, "you are a woman with ferns in a pot I don't want you, +and I don't want Dublin Bay herrings, or boot-laces either, so you can +go away.--The crankiness of that man is more than tongue can tell. As +Miss Carty says, I shouldn't stand it for an hour--Come in, can't +you--and well she may say it, and she a spinster without a worry under +heaven but her suspicious nature and her hair falling out. And then to +be treated the way I am by that girl! It'd make a saint waxy so it +would.--Good heavens! can't you come in, or are you deaf or lame or +what?" and in some exasperation she arose and went to the door. She +looked in perplexity for one moment from her food to her visitor, but +as good manners and a lady are never separate she welcomed and drew the +young man inside-- + +"Come in, Mr. O'Grady," said she. "How are you now at all? Why it's +nearly a week since you were here. Your mother's well I hope (sit down +there now and rest yourself). Some people are always well, but I'm +not--it's (sit there beside the window, like a good boy) it's hard to +have poor health and a crotchety husband, but we all have our trials. +Is your father well too? but what's the use of asking, every one's well +but me. Did your aunt get the pot of jam I sent her last Tuesday? +Raspberry is supposed to be good for the throat, but her throat's all +right. Maybe she threw it out: I'm not blaming her if she did. God +knows she can buy jam if she wants it without being beholden to any one +for presents and her husband in the Post Office.--Well, well, well, I'm +real glad to see you--and now, tell me all the news?" + +The young man was a little embarrassed by this flood of language and +its multiplicity of direction, but the interval gave him time to +collect himself and get into the atmosphere.--He replied-- + +"I don't think there is any news to tell, ma'm. Father and mother are +quite well, thank you, and Aunt Jane got the jam all right, but she +didn't eat it, because----" + +"I knew she didn't," said Mrs. O'Reilly with pained humility, "we all +have our troubles and jam doesn't matter. Give her my love all the +same, but maybe she doesn't want it either." + +"You see," said the young man, "the children got at the jam before she +could, and they cleaned the pot. Aunt Jane was very angry about it." + +"Was she now?" said the instantly interested lady. "It's real bad for +a stout person to be angry. Apoplexy or something might ensue and +death would be instantaneous and cemeteries the price they are in +Glasnevin and all: but the children shouldn't have eaten all the jam at +once, it's bad for the stomach that way: still, God is good and maybe +they'll recover." + +"They don't seem much the worse for it," said he, laughing; "they said +it was fine jam." + +"Well they might," replied his hostess, with suppressed indignation, +"and raspberries eightpence the pound in Grafton Street, and the best +preserving sugar twopence-three-farthings, and coal the way it is.--Ah, +no matter, God is good, and we can't live for ever." + +The four seconds of silence which followed was broken by the lover-- + +"Is Julia Elizabeth in, ma'm?" said he timidly. + +"She's not, then," was the reply. "We all have our trials, Mr. +O'Grady, and she's mine. I don't complain, but I don't deserve it, for +a harder working woman never lived, but there you are." + +"I'm rather glad she's out," said the youth hastily, "for I wanted to +speak to yourself and your husband before I said anything to her." + +Mrs. O'Reilly wheeled slowly to face him-- + +"Did you now?" said she, "and is it about Julia Elizabeth you came +over? Well, well, well, just to think of it! But I guessed it long +ago, when you bought the yellow boots. She's a real good girl, Mr. +O'Grady. There's many and many's the young man, and they in good +positions, mind you--but maybe you don't mean that at all. Is it a +message from your Aunt Jane or your mother? Your Aunt Jane does send +messages, God help her!" + +"It's not, Mrs. O'Reilly: it's, if I may presume to say so, about +myself." + +"I knew it," was the rapid and enthusiastic reply. "She's a fine cook, +Mr. O'Grady, and a head of hair that reaches down to her waist, and won +prizes at school for composition. I'll call himself--he'll be +delighted. He's in the next room making faces at a map. Maps are a +terrible occupation, Mr. O'Grady, they spoil his eyesight and make him +curse----" + +She ambled to the door and called urgently-- + +"O'Reilly, here's young Mr. O'Grady wants to see you." + +Her husband entered with a pen in his mouth and looked very severely at +his visitor-- + +"What brought you round, young man?" said he. + +The youth became very nervous. He stood up stammering-- + +"It's a delicate subject, sir," said he, "and I thought it would only +be right to come to you first." + +Here the lady broke in rapturously-- + +"Isn't it splendid, O'Reilly! You and me sitting here growing old and +contented, and this young gentleman talking to us the way he is. +Doesn't it make you think of the song 'John Anderson, my Jo, John'?" + +Her husband turned a bewildered but savage eye on his spouse-- + +"It does not, ma'm," said he. "Well," he barked at Mr. O'Grady, "what +do you want?" + +"I want to speak about your daughter, sir." + +"She's not a delicate subject." + +"No indeed," said his wife. "Never a day's illness in her life except +the measles, and they're wholesome when you're young, and an appetite +worth cooking for, two eggs every morning and more if she got it." + +Her husband turned on her with hands of frenzy-- + +"Oh----!" said he, and then to their visitor, "What have you to say +about my daughter?" + +"The fact is, sir," he stammered, "I'm in love with her." + +"I see, you are the delicate subject, and what then?" + +"And I want to marry her, sir." + +"That's not delicacy, that's disease, young man. Have you spoken to +Julia Elizabeth about this?" + +"No, sir, I wanted first to obtain your and Mrs. O'Reilly's permission +to approach her." + +"And quite right, too," said the lady warmly. "Isn't it delightful," +she continued, "to see a young, bashful youth telling of his love for +our dear child? Doesn't it make you think of Moore's beautiful song, +'Love's Young Dream,' O'Reilly?" + +"It does not," her husband snapped, "I never heard of the song I tell +you, and I never want to." + +He turned again to the youth-- + +"If you are in earnest about this, you have my permission to court +Julia Elizabeth as much as she'll let you. But don't blame me if she +marries you. People who take risks must expect accidents. Don't go +about lamenting that I hooked you in, or led you on, or anything like +that.--I tell you, here and now, that she has a rotten temper--" + +His wife was aghast-- + +"For shame, O'Reilly," said she. + +Her husband continued, looking steadily at her-- + +"A rotten temper," said he, "she gives back answers." + +"Never," was Mrs. O'Reilly's wild exclamation. + +"She scratches like a cat," said her husband. + +"It's a falsehood," cried the lady, almost in tears. + +"She is obstinate, sulky, stubborn and cantankerous." + +"A tissue," said his wife. "An absolute tissue," she repeated with the +firmness which masks hysteria. + +Her husband continued inexorably-- + +"She's a gad-about, a pavement-hopper, and when she has the toothache +she curses like a carman. Now, young man, marry her if you like." + +These extraordinary accusations were powerless against love and +etiquette--the young man stood up: his voice rang-- + +"I will, sir," said he steadily, "and I'll be proud to be her husband." + +In a very frenzy of enthusiasm, Mrs. O'Reilly arose-- + +"Good boy," said she. "Tell your Aunt Jane I'll send her another pot +of jam." She turned to her husband, "Isn't it delightful, O'Reilly, +doesn't it make you think of the song, 'True, True Till Death'?" + +Mr. O'Reilly replied grimly-- + +"It does not, ma'm.--I'm going back to my work." + +"Be a gentleman, O'Reilly," said his wife pleadingly. "Won't you offer +Mr. O'Grady a bottle of stout or a drop of spirits?" + +The youth intervened hastily, for it is well to hide one's vices from +one's family-- + +"Oh no, ma'm, not at all," said he, "I never drink intoxicating +liquors." + +"Splendid," said the beaming lady. "You're better without it. If you +knew the happy homes it has ruined, and the things the clergy say about +it you'd be astonished. I only take it myself for the rheumatism, but +I never did like it, did I, O'Reilly?" + +"Never, ma'm," was his reply. "I only take it myself because my +hearing is bad. Now, listen to me, young man. You want to marry Julia +Elizabeth, and I'll be glad to see her married to a sensible, sober, +industrious husband.--When I spoke about her a minute ago I was only +joking." + +"I knew it all the time," said his wife. "Do you remember, Mr. +O'Grady, I winked at you?" + +"The girl is a good girl," said her husband, "and well brought up." + +"Yes," said his wife, "her hair reaches down to her waist, and she won +a prize for composition--Jessica's First Prayer, all about a girl +with----" + +Mr. O'Reilly continued-- + +"She brings me up a cup of tea every morning before I get up." + +"She never wore spectacles in her life," said Mrs. O'Reilly, "and she +got a prize for freehand drawing." + +"She did so," said Mr. O'Reilly. + +His wife continued-- + +"The Schoolboy Baronet it was; all about a young man that broke his leg +down a coal mine and it never got well again until he met the girl of +his heart." + +"Tell me," said Mr. O'Reilly, "how are you young people going to live, +and where?" + +His wife interpolated-- + +"Your Aunt Jane told me that you had seventeen shillings and sixpence a +week.--Take my advice and live on the south side--two rooms easily and +most salubrious." + +The young man coughed guardedly, he had received a rise of wages since +that information passed, but candour belongs to childhood, and one must +live these frailties down-- + +"Seventeen and six isn't very much, of course," said he, "but I am +young and strong----" + +"It's more than I had," said his host, "when I was your age. Hello, +there's the post!" + +Mrs. O'Reilly went to the door and returned instantly with a letter in +her hand. She presented it to her husband-- + +"It's addressed to you, O'Reilly," said she plaintively. "Maybe it's a +bill, but God's good and maybe it's a cheque." + +Her husband nodded at the company and tore his letter open. He read +it, and, at once as it appeared, he went mad, he raved, he stuttered, +now slapping the letter with his forefinger and, anon, shaking his fist +at his wife-- + +"Here's your daughter, ma'm," he stammered. "Here's your daughter, I +say." + +"Where?" cried the amazed lady. "What is it, O'Reilly?" She arose +hastily and rolled towards him. + +Mr. O'Reilly repelled her fiercely-- + +"A good riddance," he shouted. + +"Tell me, O'Reilly, I command you," cried his wife. + +"A minx, a jade," snarled the man. + +"I insist," said she. "I must be told. I'm not well, I tell you. My +head's going round. Give me the letter." + +Mr. O'Reilly drew about him a sudden and terrible calmness-- + +"Listen, woman," said he, "and you too, young man, and be thankful for +your escape." + +"DEAR PA," he read, "this is to tell you that I got married to-day to +Christie Rorke. We are going to open a little fried-fish shop near +Amiens Street. Hoping this finds you as it leaves me at present, your +loving daughter, + +"JULIA ELIZABETH. + +"P.S.--Give Christie's love to Ma." + +Mrs. O'Reilly sank again to her chair. + +Her mouth was partly open. She breathed with difficulty. Her eyes +were fixed on space, and she seemed to be communing with the guardians +of Chaos-- + +"Married!" said she in a musing whisper. "Christie!" said she. She +turned to her husband--"What an amazing thing. Doesn't it make you +think, O'Reilly, of the poem, 'The World Recedes, it Disappears'?" + +"It does not, ma'm," said her husband savagely. + +"And what is this young gentleman going to do?" she continued, gazing +tearfully at the suitor. + +"He's going to go home," replied her husband fiercely. "He ought to be +in bed long ago." + +"A broken heart," said his wife, "is a sad companion to go home with. +Doesn't it make you think of the song----?" + +"It does not, ma'm," roared her husband. "I'm going back to my work," +and once again the door banged and the room shook. + +Young Mr. O'Grady arose timidly. The world was swimming about him. +Love had deserted him, and etiquette was now his sole anchor; he shook +hands with Mrs. O'Reilly-- + +"I think I had better be going now," said he. "Good-bye, Mrs. +O'Reilly." + +"Must you really go?" said that lady with the smile of a maniac. + +"I'm afraid so," and he moved towards the door. + +"Well," said she, "give my love to your mother and your Aunt Jane." + +"I will," was his reply, "and," with firm politeness, "thank you for a +very pleasant evening." + +"Don't mention it, Mr. O'Grady. Good-bye." + +Mrs. O'Reilly closed the door and walked back towards the table smiling +madly. She sank into a chair. Her eye fell on the butter-knife-- + +"I haven't had a bit to eat this day," said she in a loud and +threatening voice, and once again she pulled the loaf towards her. + + +II + +His mother finished reading the story of the Beautiful Princess, and it +was surely the saddest story he had ever heard. He could not bear to +think of that lovely and delicate lady all alone in the great, black +forest waiting until the giant came back from killing her seven brothers. +He would return with their seven heads swinging pitifully from his +girdle, and, when he reached the castle gates, he would gnash his teeth +through the keyhole with a noise like the grinding together of great +rocks, and would poke his head through the fanlight of the door, and say, +fee-faw-fum in a voice of such exceeding loudness that the castle would +be shaken to its foundation. + +Thinking of this made his throat grow painful with emotion, and then his +heart swelled to the most uncomfortable dimensions, and he resolved to +devote his whole life to the rescue of the Princess, and, if necessary, +die in her defence. + +Such was his impatience that he could not wait for anything more than his +dinner, and this he ate so speedily that his father called him a +Perfect-Young-Glutton, and a Disgrace-To-Any-Table. He bore these +insults in a meek and heroic spirit, whereupon his mother said that he +must be ill, and it was only by a violent and sustained outcry that he +escaped being sent to bed. + +Immediately after dinner he set out in search of the giant's castle. Now +there is scarcely anything in the world more difficult to find than a +giant's castle, for it is so large that one can only see it through the +wrong end of a telescope; and, furthermore, he did not even know this +giant's name. He might never have found the place if he had not met a +certain old woman on the common. + +She was a very nice old woman. She had three teeth, a red shawl, and an +umbrella with groceries inside it; so he told her of the difficulty he +was in. + +She replied that he was in luck's way, and that she was the only person +in the world who could assist him. She said her name was +Really-and-Truly, and that she had a magic head, and that if he cut her +head off it would answer any questions he asked it. So he stropped his +penknife on his boot, and said he was ready if she was. + +The old woman then informed him that in all affairs of this delicate +nature it was customary to take the will for the deed, and that he might +now ask her head anything he wanted to know--so he asked the head what +was the way to the nearest giant, and the head replied that if he took +the first turning to the left, the second to the right, and then the +first to the left again, and if he then knocked at the fifth door on the +right-hand side, he would see the giant. + +He thanked the old woman very much for the use of her head, and she +permitted him to lend her one threepenny-piece, one pocket-handkerchief, +one gun-metal watch, one cap, and one boot-lace. She said that she never +took two of anything, because that was not fair, and that she wanted +these for a very particular, secret purpose, about which she dare not +speak, and, as to which she trusted he would not press her, and then she +took a most affectionate leave of him and went away. + +He followed her directions with the utmost fidelity, and soon found +himself opposite a house which, to the eyes of any one over seven years +of age, looked very like any other house, but which, to the searching eye +of six and three quarters, was patently and palpably a giant's castle. + +He tried the door, but it was locked, as, indeed, he had expected it +would be. Then he crept very cautiously, and peeped through the first +floor window. He could see in quite plainly. There was a polar bear +crouching on the floor, and the head looked at him so directly and +vindictively that if he had not been a hero he would have fled. The +unexpected is always terrible, and when one goes forth to kill a giant it +is unkind of Providence to complicate one's adventure with a gratuitous +and wholly unnecessary polar bear. He was, however, reassured by the +sight of a heavy chair standing on the polar bear's stomach, and in the +chair there sat the most beautiful woman in the world. + +An ordinary person would not have understood so instantly that she was +the most beautiful woman in the world, because she looked very stout, and +much older than is customary with princesses--but that was owing to the +fact that she was under an enchantment, and she would become quite young +again when the giant was slain and three drops of his blood had been +sprinkled on her brow. + +She was leaning forward in the chair, staring into the fire, and she was +so motionless that it was quite plain she must be under an enchantment. +From the very first instant he saw the princess he loved her, and his +heart swelled with pity to think that so beautiful a damsel should be +subjected to the tyranny of a giant. These twin passions of pity and +love grew to so furious a strength within him that he could no longer +contain himself. He wept in a loud and very sudden voice which lifted +the damsel out of her enchantment and her chair, and hurled her across +the room as though she had been propelled by a powerful spring. + +He was so overjoyed at seeing her move that he pressed his face against +the glass and wept with great strength, and, in a few moments, the +princess came timidly to the window and looked out. She looked right +over his head at first, and then she looked down and saw him, and her +eyebrows went far up on her forehead, and her mouth opened; and so he +knew that she was delighted to see him. He nodded to give her courage, +and shouted three times, "Open Sesame, Open Sesame, Open Sesame," and +then she opened the window and he climbed in. + +The princess tried to push him out again, but she was not able, and he +bade her put all her jewels in the heel of her boot and fly with him. +But she was evidently the victim of a very powerful enchantment, for she +struggled violently, and said incomprehensible things to him, such as "Is +it a fire, or were you chased?" and "Where is the cook?" But after a +little time she listened to the voice of reason, and recognised that +these were legitimate and heroic embraces from which she could not +honourably disentangle herself. + +When her first transports of joy were somewhat abated she assured him +that excessive haste had often undone great schemes, and that one should +always look before one leaped, and that one should never be rescued all +at once, but gradually, in order that one might become accustomed to the +severe air of freedom--and he was overjoyed to find that she was as wise +as she was beautiful. + +He told her that he loved her dearly, and she admitted, after some +persuasion, that she was not insensible to the charms of his heart and +intellect, but she confessed that her love was given to another. + +At these tidings his heart withered away within him, and when the +princess admitted she loved the giant his amazement became profound and +complicated. There was a rushing sound in his ears. The debris of his +well-known world was crashing about him, and he was staring upon a new +planet, the name of which was Incredulity. He looked round with a queer +feeling of insecurity. At any moment the floor might stand up on one of +its corners, or the walls might begin to flap and waggle. But none of +these things happened. Before him sat the princess in an attitude of +deep dejection, and her lily-white hands rested helplessly on her lap. +She told him in a voice that trembled that she would have married him if +he had asked her ten years earlier, and urged that she could not fly with +him now, because, in the first place, she had six children, and, in the +second place, it would be against the law, and, in the third place, his +mother might object. She admitted that she was unworthy of his love, and +that she should have waited, and she bore his reproaches with a meekness +which finally disarmed him. + +He stropped his penknife on his boot, and said that there was nothing +left but to kill the giant, and that she had better leave the room while +he did so, because it would not be a sight for a weak woman, and he +wondered audibly how much hasty-pudding would fall out of the giant if he +stabbed him right to the heart. The princess begged him not to kill her +husband, and assured him that this giant had not got any hasty-pudding in +his heart at all, and that he was really the nicest giant that ever +lived, and, further, that he had not killed her seven brothers, but the +seven brothers of quite another person entirely, which was only a +reasonable thing to do when one looked at it properly, and she continued +in a strain which proved to him that this unnatural woman really loved +the giant. + +It was more in pity than in anger that he recognised the impossibility of +rescuing this person. He saw at last that she was unworthy of being +rescued, and told her so. He said bitterly that he had grave doubts of +her being a princess at all, and that if she was married to a giant it +was no more than she deserved, and further he had a good mind to rescue +the giant from her, and he would do so in a minute, only that it was +against his principles to rescue giants.--And, saying so, he placed his +penknife between his teeth and climbed out through the window again. + +He stood for a moment outside the window with his right hand extended to +the sky and the moonlight blazing on his penknife--a truly formidable +figure, and one which the princess never forgot; and then he walked +slowly away, hiding behind a cold and impassive demeanour a mind that was +tortured and a heart that had plumbed most of the depths of human +suffering. + + +III + +Aloysius Murphy went a-courting when the woods were green. There were +grapes in the air and birds in the river. A voice and a song went +everywhere, and the voice said, "Where is my beloved?" and the song +replied, "Thy beloved is awaiting thee, and she stretches her hands +abroad and laughs for thy coming; bind then the feather of a bird to +thy heel and a red rose upon thy hair, and go quickly." + +So he took his hat from behind the door and his stick from beside the +bed and went out into the evening. + +He had been engaged to Miss Nora MacMahon for two ecstatic months, and +held the opinion that the earth and the heavens were aware of the +intensity of his passion, and applauded the unique justice of his +choice. + +By day he sat humbly in a solicitor's office, or scurried through the +thousand offices of the Four Courts, but with night came freedom, and +he felt himself to be of the kindred of the gods and marched in pomp. +By what subterranean workings had he become familiar with the lady? +Suffice it that the impossible is possible to a lover. Everything can +be achieved in time. The man who wishes to put a mountain in his +pocket can do so if his pocket and his wish be of the requisite +magnitude. + +Now the lady towards whom the raging torrent of his affections had been +directed was the daughter of his employer, and this, while it notated +romance, pointed also to tragedy. Further, while this fact was well +within his knowledge, it was far from the cognizance of the lady. He +would have enlightened her on the point, but the longer he delayed the +revelation, the more difficult did it become. Perpetually his tongue +ached to utter the truth. When he might be squeezing her hand or +plunging his glance into the depths of her eyes, consciousness would +touch him on the shoulder with a bony hand and say, "That is the boss's +daughter you are hugging"--a reminder which was provocative sometimes +of an almost unholy delight, when to sing and dance and go mad was but +natural; but at other times it brought with it moods of woe, abysses of +blackness. + +In the solitude of the room wherein he lodged he sometimes indulged in +a small drama, wherein, as the hero, he would smile a slightly sad and +quizzical smile, and say gently, "Child, you are Mr. MacMahon's +daughter, I am but his clerk"--here the smile became more sadly +quizzical--"how can I ask you to forsake the luxury of a residence in +Clontarf for the uncongenial, nay, bleak surroundings of a South +Circular Road habitation?" And she, ah me! She vowed that a hut and a +crust and the love of her heart. . .! No matter! + +So, nightly, Aloysius Murphy took the tram to Clontarf, and there, +wide-coated and sombreroed like a mediaeval conspirator, he trod +delicately beside his cloaked and hooded inamorata, whispering of the +spice of the wind and the great stretches of the sea. + +Now a lover who comes with the shades of night, harbinger of the moon, +and hand in glove with the stars, must be a very romantic person +indeed, and, even if he is not, a lady whose years are tender can +easily supply the necessary gauze to tone down his too-rigorous +projections. But the bird that flies by night must adduce for our +curiosity substantial reason why his flight has deserted the whiteness +of the daytime; else we may be tempted to believe that his advent in +darkness is thus shrouded for even duskier purposes.--Miss MacMahon had +begun to inquire who Mr. Murphy was, and he had, accordingly, begun to +explain who he was not. This explanation had wrapped his identity in +the most labyrinthine mystery, but Miss MacMahon detected in the rapid, +incomprehensible fluctuations of his story a heart torn by unmerited +misfortune, and whose agony could only be alleviated by laying her own +dear head against its turmoil. + +To a young girl a confidant is almost as necessary as a lover, and when +the rendezvous is clandestine, the youth mysterious, and his hat +broad-leafed and flapping, then the necessity for a confidant becomes +imperative. + +Miss MacMahon confided the knowledge of all her happiness to the +thrilled ear of her younger sister, who at once hugged her, and bubbled +query, conjecture, and admonishment. ". . . Long or short? . . . +Dark or fair?" ". . . and slender . . . with eyes . . . dove . . . +lightning . . . hair . . . and so gentle . . . and then I said . . . +and then he said . . .!" "Oh, sweet!" sighed the younger sister, and +she stretched her arms wide and crushed the absent excellences of Mr. +Murphy to her youthful breast. + +On returning next day from church, having listened awe-stricken to a +sermon on filial obedience, the little sister bound her mother to +secrecy, told the story, and said she wished she were dead. +Subsequently the father of Clann MacMahon was informed, and he said +"Hum" and "Ha," and rolled a fierce, hard eye, and many times during +the progress of the narrative he interjected with furious energy these +words, "Don't be a fool, Jane," and Mrs. MacMahon responded meekly, +"Yes, dear," and Mr. MacMahon then said "Hum" and "Ha" and "Gr-r-r-up" +in a truly terrible and ogreish manner; and in her distant chamber Miss +MacMahon heard the reverberation of that sonorous grunt, and whispered +to her little sister, "Pa's in a wax," and the little sister pretended +to be asleep. + +The spectacle of an elderly gentleman, side-whiskered, precise and +grey, disguising himself with mufflers and a squash hat, and stalking +with sombre fortitude the erratic wanderings of a pair of young +featherheads, is one which mirth may be pleased to linger upon. Such a +spectacle was now to be observed in the semi-rural outskirts of +Clontarf. Mr. MacMahon tracked his daughter with considerable stealth, +adopting unconsciously the elongated and nervous stride of a theatrical +villain. He saw her meet a young man wearing a broad-brimmed hat, +whose clothing was mysteriously theatrical, and whose general shape, +when it could be glimpsed, was oddly familiar. + +"I have seen that fellow somewhere," said he. + +The lovers met and kissed, and the glaring father spoke rapidly but +softly to himself for a few moments. He was not accustomed to walking, +and it appeared as if these two intended to walk for ever, but he kept +them in sight, and when the time came for parting he was close at hand. + +The parting was prolonged, and renewed, and rehearsed again with +amendments and additions: he could not have believed that saying +good-bye to a person could be turned into so complicated and symbolic a +ceremony: but, at last, his daughter, with many a backward look and +wave of hand, departed in one direction, and the gentleman, after +similar signals, moved towards the tramway. + +"I know that fellow, whoever he is," said Mr. MacMahon. + +Passing a lamp-post, Mr. Aloysius Murphy stayed for a moment to light +his pipe, and Mr. MacMahon stared, he ground his teeth, he foamed at +the mouth, and his already prominent eyes bulged still further and +rounder-- + +"Well, I'm----!" said he. + +He turned and walked homewards slowly, murmuring often to himself and +to the night, "All right! wait, though! Hum! Ha! Gr-r-r-up!" + +That night he repeatedly entreated his wife "not to be a fool, Jane," +and she as repeatedly replied, "Yes, dear." Long after midnight he +awoke her by roaring violently from the very interior depths of a +dream, "Cheek of the fellow! Pup! Gr-r-r-up!" + +At breakfast on the following morning he suggested to his wife and +elder daughter that they should visit his office later on in the day-- + +"You have never seen it, Nora," said he, "and you ought to have a look +at the den where your poor old daddy spends his time grinding dress +material for his family from the faces of the poor. I've got some +funny clerks, too: one of them is a curiosity." Here, growing suddenly +furious, he gave an egg a clout. + +His daughter giggled-- + +"Oh, Pa," said she, "you are not breaking that egg, you are murdering +it." + +He looked at her gloomily-- + +"It wasn't the egg I was hitting," said he. "Gr-r-r-up," said he +suddenly, and he stabbed a piece of butter, squashed it to death on a +slice of bread, and tore it to pieces with his teeth. + +The young lady looked at him with some amazement, but she said nothing, +for she believed, as most ladies do, that men are a little mad +sometimes, and are foolish always. + +Her father intercepted that glance, and instantly snarled-- + +"Can you cook, young woman?" said he. + +"Of course, father," replied the perplexed maiden. + +He laid aside his spoon and gave her his full attention. + +"Can you cook potatoes?" said he. "Can you mash 'em, eh? Can you mash +'em? What! You can. They call them Murphies in this country, girl. +Can you mash Murphys, eh? I can. There's a Murphy I know, and, +although it's been mashed already, by the Lord Harry, I'll mash it +again. Did you ever know that potatoes had eyes, miss? Did you ever +notice it when you were cooking them? Did you ever look into the eyes +of a Murphy, eh? When you mashed it, what? Don't answer me, girl." + +"I don't know what you are talking about, Pa," said the young lady. + +"Don't you, now?" grinned the furious gentleman, and his bulging eyes +looked like little round balls of glass. "Who said you did, miss? +Gr-r-r-up," said he, and the poor girl jumped as though she had been +prodded with a pin. + +Mr. Aloysius Murphy's activities began at ten o'clock in the morning by +opening the office letters with an ivory instrument and handing them to +his employer; then, as each letter was read, he entered its receipt and +date in a book kept for that purpose. + +When Mr. MacMahon came in on the morning following the occurrences I +have detailed he neglected, for the first time in many years, to +respond to his clerk's respectfully-cordial salutation. To the +discreet "Good-morning, sir," he vouchsafed no reply. Mr. Murphy was a +trifle indignant and a good deal perturbed, for to an unquiet +conscience a word or the lack of it is a goad. Once or twice, looking +up from his book, he discovered his employer's hard eyes fixed upon him +with a regard too particular to be pleasant. + +An employer seldom does more than glance at his clerk, just the +sideward glint of a look which remarks his presence without admitting +his necessity, and in return the clerk slants a hurried eye on his +employer, notes swiftly if his aspect be sulky or benign, and stays his +vision at that. But, now, Mr. Murphy, with sudden trepidation, with a +frightful sinking in the pit of his stomach, became aware that his +employer was looking at him stealthily; and, little by little, he took +to sneaking glances at his employer. After a few moments neither +seemed to be able to keep his eyes from straying--they created +opportunities in connection with the letters; the one looking intent, +wide-eyed, and with a cold, frigid, rigid, hard stare, and the other +scurrying and furtive, in-and-away, hit-and-miss-and-try-again, wink, +blink, and twitter. + +Mr. MacMahon spoke-- + +"Murphy!" + +"Yes, sir." + +"Have you anything in Court to-day?" + +"Yes, sir, an ex parte application, Donald and Cluggs." + +"Let O'Neill attend to it. I shall want you to draft a deed for some +ladies who will call here at noon. You can come down at ten minutes +after twelve." + +"Yes, sir," said Murphy. + +He grabbed his share of the letters and got to the door bathed in +perspiration and forebodings. He closed the door softly behind him, +and stood for a few seconds staring at the handle. "Blow you!" said he +viciously to nothing in particular, and he went slowly upstairs. + +"He can't know," said he on the first landing. On the second floor he +thought, "She couldn't have told for she didn't know herself." He +reached his desk. "I wish I had a half of whisky," said the young man +to himself. + +Before, however, twelve o'clock arrived he had journeyed on the hopeful +pinions of youth from the dogmatic "could not be" to the equally +immovable "is not," and his mind resumed its interrupted equilibrium. + +At twelve o'clock Mrs. and Miss MacMahon arrived, and were at once +shown into the private office. At ten minutes past, Mr. Murphy's +respectful tap was heard. "Don't, Eddie," said Mrs. MacMahon in a +queer, flurried voice. "Come in," said her husband. Nora was +examining some judicial cartoons pinned over the mantelpiece. Mr. +Murphy opened the door a few inches, slid through the aperture, and was +at once caught and held by his employer's eye, which, like a hand, +guided him to the table with his notebook. Under the almost physical +pressure of that authoritative glare he did not dare to look who was in +the room, but the rim of his eye saw the movement of a skirt like the +far-away, shadowy canter of a ghost's robe. He fixed his attention on +his note-book. + +Mr. MacMahon began to dictate a Deed of Conveyance from a precedent +deed in his hand. After dictating for some few minutes-- + +"Murphy," said he, and at the word the young lady studying the cartoons +stiffened, "I've rather lost the thread of that clause; please read +what you have down." + +Murphy began to read, and, at the first word, the girl made a tiny, +shrill, mouse's noise, and then stood stock-still, tightened up and +frightened, with her two wild eyes trying to peep around her ears. + +Mr. Murphy heard the noise and faltered--he knew instinctively. +Something told him with the bellowing assurance of a cannon who was +there. He must look. He forced his slack face past the granite image +that was his employer, saw a serge-clad figure that he knew, one ear +and the curve of a cheek. Then a cascade broke inside his head. It +buzzed and chattered and crashed, with now and again the blank +brutality of thunder bashing through the noise. The serge-clad figure +swelled suddenly to a tremendous magnitude, and then it receded just as +swiftly, and the vast earth spun minutely on a pin's point ten million +miles away, and she was behind it, her eyes piercing with scorn. . . . +Through the furious winds that whirled about his brain he heard a +whisper, thin and cold, and insistent as a razor's edge, "Go on, +Murphy; go on, Murphy." He strove to fix his attention on his +shorthand notes--To fight it down, to stand the shock like a man, and +then crawl into a hole somewhere and die; but his mind would not grip, +nor his eyes focus. The only words which his empty brain could pump up +were these, irrelevant and idiotic, "'A frog he would a-wooing go, +heigho,' said Rowley"; and they must not be said. "It is a bit +difficult, perhaps," said the whispering voice that crept through the +tumult of winds and waters in his head. "Never mind, take down the +rest of it," and the far-away whisper began to say things all about +nothing, making queer little noises and pauses, running for a moment +into a ripple of sound, and eddying and dying away and coming back +again--buz-z-z! His notebook lying on the table was as small as a +postage stamp, while the pencil in his hand was as big as an elephant's +leg. How can a man write on a microscopic blur with the stump of a fir +tree? He poked and prodded, and Mr. MacMahon watched for a few moments +his clerk poking his note-book with the wrong end of a pencil. He +silently pulled his daughter forward and made her look. After a +little-- + +"That will do, Murphy," said he, and Mr. Murphy, before he got out, +made two severe attempts to walk through a wall. + +For half an hour he sat at his desk in a trance, with his eyes fixed +upon an ink-bottle. At last, nodding his head slowly-- + +"I'll bet you a shilling," said he to the ink-bottle, "that I get the +sack to-night." + +And the ink-bottle lost the wager. + + + + +THE BLIND MAN + +He was one who would have passed by the Sphinx without seeing it. He +did not believe in the necessity for sphinxes, or in their reality, for +that matter--they did not exist for him. Indeed, he was one to whom +the Sphinx would not have been visible. He might have eyed it and +noted a certain bulk of grotesque stone, but nothing more significant. + +He was sex-blind, and, so, peculiarly limited by the fact that he could +not appreciate women. If he had been pressed for a theory or +metaphysic of womanhood he would have been unable to formulate any. +Their presence he admitted, perforce: their utility was quite apparent +to him on the surface, but, subterraneously, he doubted both their +existence and their utility. He might have said perplexedly--Why +cannot they do whatever they have to do without being always in the +way? He might have said--Hang it, they are everywhere and what good +are they doing? They bothered him, they destroyed his ease when he was +near them, and they spoke a language which he did not understand and +did not want to understand. But as his limitations did not press on +him neither did they trouble him. He was not sexually deficient, and +he did not dislike women; he simply ignored them, and was only really +at home with men. All the crudities which we enumerate as masculine +delighted him--simple things, for, in the gender of abstract ideas, +vice is feminine, brutality is masculine, the female being older, +vastly older than the male, much more competent in every way, stronger, +even in her physique, than he, and, having little baggage of mental or +ethical preoccupations to delay her progress, she is still the guardian +of evolution, requiring little more from man than to be stroked and +petted for a while. + +He could be brutal at times. He liked to get drunk at seasonable +periods. He would cheerfully break a head or a window, and would +bandage the one damage or pay for the other with equal skill and +pleasure. He liked to tramp rugged miles swinging his arms and +whistling as he went, and he could sit for hours by the side of a ditch +thinking thoughts without words--an easy and a pleasant way of +thinking, and one which may lead to something in the long run. + +Even his mother was an abstraction to him. He was kind to her so far +as doing things went, but he looked over her, or round her, and marched +away and forgot her. + +Sex-blindness carries with it many other darknesses. We do not know +what masculine thing is projected by the feminine consciousness, and +civilisation, even life itself, must stand at a halt until that has +been discovered or created, but art is the female projected by the +male: science is the male projected by the male--as yet a poor thing, +and to remain so until it has become art; that is, has become +fertilised and so more psychological than mechanical. The small part +of science which came to his notice (inventions, machinery, etc.) was +easily and delightedly comprehended by him. He could do intricate +things with a knife and a piece of string, or a hammer and a saw: but a +picture, a poem, a statue, a piece of music--these left him as +uninterested as they found him: more so, in truth, for they left him +bored and dejected. + +His mother came to dislike him, and there were many causes and many +justifications for her dislike. She was an orderly, busy, competent +woman, the counterpart of endless millions of her sex, who liked to +understand what she saw or felt, and who had no happiness in reading +riddles. To her he was at times an enigma, and at times again a +simpleton. In both aspects he displeased and embarrassed her. One has +one's sense of property, and in him she could not put her finger on +anything that was hers. We demand continuity, logic in other words, +but between her son and herself there was a gulf fixed, spanned by no +bridge whatever; there was complete isolation; no boat plied between +them at all. All the kindly human things which she loved were +unintelligible to him, and his coarse pleasures or blunt evasions +distressed and bewildered her. When she spoke to him he gaped or +yawned; and yet she did not speak on weighty matters, just the +necessary small-change of existence--somebody's cold, somebody's dress, +somebody's marriage or death. When she addressed him on sterner +subjects, the ground, the weather, the crops, he looked at her as if +she were a baby, he listened with stubborn resentment, and strode away +a confessed boor. There was no contact anywhere between them, and he +was a slow exasperation to her.--What can we do with that which is ours +and not ours? either we own a thing or we do not, and, whichever way it +goes, there is some end to it; but certain enigmas are illegitimate and +are so hounded from decent cogitation. + +She could do nothing but dismiss him, and she could not even do that, +for there he was at the required periods, always primed with the wrong +reply to any question, the wrong aspiration, the wrong conjecture; a +perpetual trampler on mental corns, a person for whom one could do +nothing but apologise. + +They lived on a small farm and almost the entire work of the place was +done by him. His younger brother assisted, but that assistance could +have easily been done without. If the cattle were sick he cured them +almost by instinct. If the horse was lame or wanted a new shoe he knew +precisely what to do in both events. When the time came for ploughing +he gripped the handles and drove a furrow which was as straight and as +economical as any furrow in the world. He could dig all day long and +be happy; he gathered in the harvest as another would gather in a +bride; and, in the intervals between these occupations, he fled to the +nearest publichouse and wallowed among his kind. + +He did not fly away to drink; he fled to be among men.--Then he +awakened. His tongue worked with the best of them, and adequately too. +He could speak weightily on many things--boxing, wrestling, hunting, +fishing, the seasons, the weather, and the chances of this and the +other man's crops. He had deep knowledge about brands of tobacco and +the peculiar virtues of many different liquors. He knew birds and +beetles and worms; how a weazel would behave in extraordinary +circumstances; how to train every breed of horse and dog. He recited +goats from the cradle to the grave, could tell the name of any tree +from its leaf; knew how a bull could be coerced, a cow cut up, and what +plasters were good for a broken head. Sometimes, and often enough, the +talk would chance on women, and then he laughed as heartily as any one +else, but he was always relieved when the conversation trailed to more +interesting things. + +His mother died and left the farm to the younger instead of the elder +son; an unusual thing to do, but she did detest him. She knew her +younger son very well. He was foreign to her in nothing. His temper +ran parallel with her own, his tastes were hers, his ideas had been +largely derived from her, she could track them at any time and make or +demolish him. He would go to a dance or a picnic and be as exhilarated +as she was, and would discuss the matter afterwards. He could speak +with some cogency on the shape of this and that female person, the hat +of such an one, the disagreeableness of tea at this house and the +goodness of it at the other. He could even listen to one speaking +without going to sleep at the fourth word. In all he was a decent, +quiet lad who would become a father the exact replica of his own, and +whose daughters would resemble his mother as closely as two peas +resemble their green ancestors.--So she left him the farm. + +Of course, there was no attempt to turn the elder brother out. Indeed, +for some years the two men worked quietly together and prospered and +were contented; then, as was inevitable, the younger brother got +married, and the elder had to look out for a new place to live in, and +to work in--things had become difficult. + +It is very easy to say that in such and such circumstances a man should +do this and that well-pondered thing, but the courts of logic have as +yet the most circumscribed jurisdiction. Just as statistics can prove +anything and be quite wrong, so reason can sit in its padded chair +issuing pronouncements which are seldom within measurable distance of +any reality. Everything is true only in relation to its centre of +thought. Some people think with their heads--their subsequent actions +are as logical and unpleasant as are those of the other sort who think +only with their blood, and this latter has its irrefutable logic also. +He thought in this subterranean fashion, and if he had thought in the +other the issue would not have been any different. + +Still, it was not an easy problem for him, or for any person lacking +initiative--a sexual characteristic. He might have emigrated, but his +roots were deeply struck in his own place, so the idea never occurred +to him; furthermore, our thoughts are often no deeper than our pockets, +and one wants money to move anywhere. For any other life than that of +farming he had no training and small desire. He had no money and he +was a farmer's son. Without money he could not get a farm; being a +farmer's son he could not sink to the degradation of a day labourer; +logically he could sink, actually he could not without endangering his +own centres and verities--so he also got married. + +He married a farm of about ten acres, and the sun began to shine on him +once more; but only for a few days. Suddenly the sun went away from +the heavens; the moon disappeared from the silent night; the silent +night itself fled afar, leaving in its stead a noisy, dirty blackness +through which one slept or yawned as one could. There was the farm, of +course, one could go there and work; but the freshness went out of the +very ground; the crops lost their sweetness and candour; the horses and +cows disowned him; the goats ceased to be his friends--It was all up +with him. He did not whistle any longer. He did not swing his +shoulders as he walked, and, although he continued to smoke, he did not +look for a particular green bank whereon he could sit quietly flooded +with those slow thoughts that had no words. + +For he discovered that he had not married a farm at all. He had +married a woman--a thin-jawed, elderly slattern, whose sole beauty was +her farm. How her jaws worked! The processions and congregations of +words that fell and dribbled and slid out of them! Those jaws were +never quiet, and in spite of all he did not say anything. There was +not anything to say, but much to do from which he shivered away in +terror. He looked at her sometimes through the muscles of his arms, +through his big, strong hands, through fogs and fumes and singular, +quiet tumults that raged within him. She lessoned him on the things he +knew so well, and she was always wrong. She lectured him on those +things which she did know, but the unending disquisition, the perpetual +repetition, the foolish, empty emphasis, the dragging weightiness of +her tongue made him repudiate her knowledge and hate it as much as he +did her. + +Sometimes, looking at her, he would rub his eyes and yawn with fatigue +and wonder--there she was! A something enwrapped about with +petticoats. Veritably alive. Active as an insect! Palpable to the +touch! And what was she doing to him? Why did she do it? Why didn't +she go away? Why didn't she die? What sense was there in the making +of such a creature that clothed itself like a bolster, without any +freedom or entertainment or shapeliness? + +Her eyes were fixed on him and they always seemed to be angry; and her +tongue was uttering rubbish about horses, rubbish about cows, rubbish +about hay and oats. Nor was this the sum of his weariness. It was not +alone that he was married; he was multitudinously, egregiously married. +He had married a whole family, and what a family-- + +Her mother lived with her, her eldest sister lived with her, her +youngest sister lived with her--and these were all swathed about with +petticoats and shawls. They had no movement. Their feet were like +those of no creature he had ever observed. One could hear the +flip-flap of their slippers all over the place, and at all hours. They +were down-at-heel, draggle-tailed, and futile. There was no +workmanship about them. They were as unfinished, as unsightly as a +puddle on a road. They insulted his eyesight, his hearing, and his +energy. They had lank hair that slapped about them like wet seaweed, +and they were all talking, talking, talking. + +The mother was of an incredible age. She was senile with age. Her +cracked cackle never ceased for an instant. She talked to the dog and +the cat; she talked to the walls of the room; she spoke out through the +window to the weather; she shut her eyes in a corner and harangued the +circumambient darkness. The eldest sister was as silent as a deep +ditch and as ugly. She slid here and there with her head on one side +like an inquisitive hen watching one curiously, and was always doing +nothing with an air of futile employment. The youngest was a +semi-lunatic who prattled and prattled without ceasing, and was always +catching one's sleeve, and laughing at one's face.--And everywhere +those flopping, wriggling petticoats were appearing and disappearing. +One saw slack hair whisking by the corner of one's eye. Mysteriously, +urgently, they were coming and going and coming again, and never, never +being silent. + +More and more he went running to the public-house. But it was no +longer to be among men, it was to get drunk. One might imagine him +sitting there thinking those slow thoughts without words. One might +predict that the day would come when he would realise very suddenly, +very clearly all that he had been thinking about, and, when this +urgent, terrible thought had been translated into its own terms of +action, he would be quietly hanged by the neck until he was as dead as +he had been before he was alive. + + + + + SWEET-APPLE + + At the end of the bough, at the top of the tree + (As fragrant, as high, and as lovely as thou) + One sweet apple reddens which all men may see, + At the end of the bough. + + Swinging full to the view, tho' the gatherers now + Pass, and evade, and o'erlook busily: + Overlook! nay, but pluck it! they cannot tell how. + + For it swings out of reach as a cloud, and as free + As a star, or thy beauty, which seems too, I vow, + Remote as the sweet rosy apple--ah me! + At the end of the bough. + + + + +THREE HAPPY PLACES + +I + +One awakened suddenly in those days. Sleep was not followed by the +haze which trails behind more mature slumbers. One's eyes opened wide +and bright, and brains and legs became instantly active. If by a +chance the boy lying next to you was still asleep, it was the thing to +hit him with a pillow. Even among boys, however, there are certain +morose creatures who are ill-tempered in the morning, and these, on +being struck with a pillow, become malignantly active, and desire to +fight with fists instead of pillows. + +Bull was such a boy. He was densely packed with pugnacity. He lived +for ever on the extreme slope of a fight, down which he slid at a word, +a nod, a wink, into strenuous and bloodthirsty warfare. He was never +seen without a black eye, a bruised lip, or something wrong with his +ear. He had the most miscellaneous collection of hurts that one could +imagine, and he was always prepared to exhibit his latest injury in +exchange for a piece of toffee. If this method of barter was not +relished, he would hit the proprietor of the toffee and confiscate the +goods to his own use. + +His knowledge of who had sweets was uncanny. He had an extra sense in +that direction, which was a trouble to all smaller boys. No matter how +cunningly one concealed a sticky treasure, just when one was secretly +enjoying it he came leaping out of space with the most offensive +friendliness crinkling all over his face, and his desire to participate +in the confection was advanced without any preliminary courtesies-- + +"What have you got? Show! Give us a bit. Can't you give a fellow a +bit?" + +When the bit was tendered he snatched it, swallowed it, and growled-- + +"Do you call that a bit? Give us a real bit." + +There are plenty of boys who will defend their toffee with their lives. +Such boys he liked to meet, for their refusal to surrender a part gave +him an opportunity to fight and a reason for confiscating the whole of +the ravished sweetmeat. One often had to devour one's sweets at a full +gallop. It was no uncommon thing to see a small boy scudding furiously +around a field with Bull pounding behind, intent as a bloodhound, and +as horribly vocal. A close examination would discover that the small +boy's jaws were moving with even greater rapidity than his legs. If he +managed to get his stuff devoured before he was caught it was all +right, but he got hammered anyhow when he was caught. However, Bull's +approach was usually managed with great skill and strategy, and before +the small boy was aware Bull was squatting beside him using +blandishments both moral and minatory. + +He was a very gifted boy. He had no bent for learning lessons but he +had a great gift for collecting and turning to his own use the property +of other people. Sometimes three or four boys swore a Solemn League +and Covenant against him. His perplexity then was extreme. He saw +toffee being devoured and none of it coming his way. Possibly his +method of thinking was in pictures, and he could visualise with painful +clarity the alien gullets down which toffee was traveling, and, +simultaneously, he could see the woeful emptiness of his own red lane. +He must have felt that all was not right with a Providence which could +allow such happenings. A world wherein there was toffee for others and +none for him was certainly a world out of joint. His idea of Utopia +would be a place where there were lots of things for him to eat and a +circle of hungry boys who watched his deliberate jaws with envy and +humility. Furthermore, the idea that smaller boys could have, not the +courage, but the heart to congregate against him, must have come to him +with a shock. He was appalled by a sense of the sinfulness of human +nature, and dismayed by the odds against which virtue has to fight. + +The others, strong in numbers, followed him on such occasions chewing +their tuck with grave deliberation, descanting minutely and loudly on +the taste of each bit, the splendid length of time it took to dissolve, +and the blessedly large quantity which yet remained to be eaten. He +threatened them, but his threats were received with yawns. He wheedled +(a thing he could do consummately well) but they were not to be +blandished. He mapped out on his own person the particular and painful +places where later on he would hit them unless he was bound over to the +peace by toffee. And they sucked their sweetstuff and made diagrams on +each other of the places where they could hit Bull if they had a mind +to, and told each other and him that he was not worth hitting and, +would probably die if he were hit. But they were careful not dissolve +partnership until the sweets were eaten and beyond even the wildest +hopes of salvage. Then, in the later-on that had been predicted, Bull +captured them in detail, and, as he had promised, he "lammed the +stuffing" out of them. + +He had all the grave wisdom of the stupid, and the extraordinary energy +and persistence which perpetuates them. He never could learn a lesson, +but he could, and did, pinch the boy next to him into adept prompting, +and would intimidate any one into doing his sums. Indeed, the man of +whom he was the promise had no need for ordinary learning. The lighter +accomplishments of life had no appeal, nor would the deeper lessons +have any meaning for him. He is simply a big, physical appetite, +untrammelled by anything like introspection or conscience, and working +in perfect innocence for the fulfilment of its simple wants. For at +base his species are surely the most simple of human creatures. In +spite of their complex physical structure they are one-celled organisms +driven through life with only a passionate hunger as their motive +power, and with no complexities of thought or emotion to hamper their +loud progressions. None but those of their own kind can suffer from +their ravages, and, even so, they fly the contact of each other with +horror. + +Doubtless by this time Bull is a prosperous and wealthy citizen +somewhere, the proprietor of a curved waistcoat and a gold watch. +Possessions other than these he would regard with the amiable tolerance +of a philosopher regarding a child with toys. So strongly acquisitive +a nature must win the particular little battles which it is fitted to +wage. When a conscienceless mind is buttressed by a pugnacious +temperament then houses and land, and cattle and maidservants, and +such-like, the small change of existence, are easily gotten. + + +II + +The sunlight of youth has a special quality which will never again be +known until we rediscover it in Paradise. What a time it was! How the +sun shone, and how often it shone! I remember playing about in a +parched and ragged field with a leaf from a copy-book stuck under my +cap to aid its quarter-inch peak in keeping off the glare of that +tremendous sunshine. + +Tip-and-Tig, Horneys and Robbers, Relievo we played, and another game, +the name of which did not then seem at all strange, but which now wears +an amazing appearance--it was, Twenty-four Yards on the Billy-Goat's +Tail. I wonder now what was that Billy-Goat, and was he able to wag the +triumphant tail of which twenty-four yards was probably no more than an +inconsiderable moiety. There were other games: Ball-in-the-Decker, +Cap-on-the-Back, and Towns or Rounders. These were all summer games. + +With the lightest effort of imagination I can see myself and other +tireless atoms scooting across reaches of sunlight. I can hear the +continuous howl which accompanied our play, and can see that ragged, +parched field spreading, save for the cluster of boys, wide and silent +to the further, greener fields, where the cows were lying down in great +coloured lumps, and one antic deer, a pet, would make such astonishing +journeys, jumping the entire circuit of the field on four thin and +absolutely rigid legs; for when it made these peculiar excursions it +never seemed to use its legs--these were held quite rigidly, and the +deer bounded by some powerful, spring-like action, its brown coat +flashing in the sunlight, and its movement a rhythmic glory which the +boys watched with ecstasy and laughter. + +An old ass was native to that field also. He had been a bright, +kind-hearted donkey at one time: a donkey whose nose might be tickled, +and who would allow one to climb upon his back. But the presence of +boys grew disturbing as he grew old, and the practical jokes of which +his youth took no heed induced a kind of insanity in his latter age. +He took to kicking the cows as they browsed peacefully, and, later, he +developed a horrid appetite for fowl, and would stalk and kill and eat +hens whenever possible. Later still he directed this unhealthy +appetite towards small boys, and after he had eaten part of one lad's +shoulder and the calf from another boy's leg he disappeared--whether he +was sold to some innocent person, or had been slaughtered mysteriously, +we did not know. We professed to believe that he had died of the +horrible taste of the boys he had bitten, and, afterwards, whenever we +played cannibals, we refused, greatly to their chagrin, to kill and eat +these two boys, on the ground that their flesh was poisonous; but the +others we slaughtered and fed on with undiminished gusto. + +There were only two trees in the field--great, gnarled monsters casting +a deep shade. In that shade the grass grew long and green and juicy. +After a game the boys would fling themselves down in the shadow of the +trees to chew the sweet grass, and play "knifey," and talk.--Such +talk!--endless and careless, and loud as the converse of young bulls. +What did we talk about? Delightful and inconsequent shoutings-- + +"That is a hawk up there, he's going to soar. How does he keep so +steady without moving his wings? Watch now! down he drops like a +stone. . . . If you give your rabbit too many cabbage leaves he'll die +of the gripes. . . . Did you ever play jack-stones? a fellow showed me +how, look! . . . When we were at the sea yesterday Jimmy Nelson +wouldn't go out from the shore. He was afraid of his life--he wouldn't +even duck down. I swam nearly out of sight, didn't I, Sam? So did +Sam. . . . You could climb right up to the top of that tree if you +tried. No you couldn't.--Yes I could, it's forked all the way +up. . . . The new master wears specs--Old Four-Eyes! and he grins at a +fellow. I don't think he's much. . . . How do midges get born? . . . +My brother has one with four blades and a thing for poking stones out +of a horse's hoof. . . . A horse-hair won't break the cane at all: +it's all bosh: rosin is the only thing. . . ." + +There was a little stream which twisted a six-foot path through the +field, the sunshine dashing off its waters in brilliant flashes. The +top of the water swarmed with flying insects and strange, small +spider-things skimmed over its surface with amazing swiftness. We +believed there were otters in that stream--they came out at nightfall +and, unless you had the good fortune to be rescued by a Newfoundland +dog, they would hold you down under water until you were drowned. We +also held there were leeches in the stream--they would grip you by the +hundred thousand and suck you to death in five minutes, and they clung +so tightly that one could not prise their mouths open with a poker. We +hoped there were whales in it, but not one of us desired a shark +because it is the Sailor's Enemy. + +An iron railing ran by part of the field. Every hole and joint of it +was crammed with earwigs, and these could be poked out of the crevices +with a straw. When an amazing number of them had been poked out there +was always another one left. The very last earwig that could be +discovered was the King. He was able and willing to bite ten times as +badly as any of the others, and he was awfully vicious when his nest +was broken into. Furthermore, he had the ability to put a curse on you +before he died, and he always did this because he was so vicious. If a +King Earwig had time to curse you before he was killed terrible things +might happen. His favourite curse was to translate himself into the +next piece of bread you would eat, and then you would see one-half of +him waggling in a hole in the bread: the other half you had already +eaten.--For this reason the King Earwig was always allowed to go free +until he was not looking, then he was killed with great suddenness. + +I remember how the slow evening shadows drew over the quiet fields. The +sunlight slowly faded to a mist of gold, into which the great trees +thrust timorous, shy fingers, and these gradually widened, until, at +last, the whole horizon bowed into the twilight. + +Across the field there could be heard the voice of the river, a +furtive, desolate hoarseness in the dusk. The cows in the far fields +had long ago wandered home to be milked, scarcely a bird moved in the +high silences, the gnats had hidden themselves away in the deep, rugged +bark of the trees, and, through the dimness, the heavy beetles were +hurling like stones, and dropping and rising again in a laborious +flight. + + +III + +He could remember that he had wept to be allowed go to school. Even +more vivid was his recollection of the persuasive and persistent tears +which he had shed to be allowed to stay at home. + +Most of the joys of school were exhausted after he had submitted to one +hour of dreary discipline.--To be compelled to sit still when every +inch of one's being clamoured to move about; to have to stand up and +stare at a blackboard upon which meaningless white scrawls were +perpetually being drawn, and as perpetually being wiped out to a +master's meaningless, monotonous verbal accompaniment; to have to join +in a chant which began with "a, b, c," and droned steadily through a +complexity of sounds to a ridiculously inadequate "z"--such things +became desperately boring. One was not even let go to sleep, and if +one wept from sheer ennui, then one was clouted. School, he shortly +decided, was not worth anybody's while, but he also discovered that a +torment had commenced which was not by any artifice to be evaded. + +Along the road to school there ran a succession of meadows--the path +was really a footway through fields--and how not to stray into these +meadows was a problem demanding the entire of one's attention. +Sometimes a rabbit bolted almost from under one's feet--it flapped away +through the grass, and bobbed up and down in a great hurry. Then his +heart filled with envy. He said to himself-- + +"That rabbit is not going to school: if it was it wouldn't run so +quickly." + +It was paltry comfort to hurl a wad of grass after it. + +Through most of the journey there was an immense, lazy bee with a bass +voice, and he droned defiance three feet away from one's cap which +almost jolted to be put over him. He seemed to understand that at such +an hour he was not in any danger, and so he would drop to the grass, +roll on his back, and cock up his legs in ecstasy. + +"Bees," said he to himself in amazement and despair, "do not go to +school." + +Each bush and tree seemed, for the moment, to be inhabited by a bird +whose song was unfamiliar and the markings on whom he could not +remember to have seen before; and he had no time to stay and note them. +He dragged beyond these objects reluctantly, pondering on the +unreasonable savagery of parents who sent one to school when the sun +was shining. + +But the greatest obstacle to getting to school was the river which +danced briskly through the fields. The footpath went for a stretch +along this stream, and, during that piece of the journey, haste was not +possible. There are so many things in a river to look at. The +movement of the water in itself exercises fascinations over a boy. +There are always bubbles, based strongly in froth, sailing gallantly +along.--One speculates how long a bubble will swim before it hits a +rock, or is washed into nothing by an eddy, or is becalmed in a +sheltered corner to ride at jaunty anchor with a navy of similar +delicate tonnage. + +Further, if one finds a twig on the path, or a leaf, there is nothing +more natural than to throw these into the river and see how fast or how +erratically they sail. Pebbles also clamour to be cast into the +stream. Perhaps a dragon-fly whirls above the surface of the water to +hold one late from school. The grasses and rushes by the marge may +stir as a grey rat slips out to take to the water and swim low down and +very fast on some strange and important journey. The inspection of +such an event cannot be hurried. One must, if it is possible, discover +where he swims to, and if his hole is found it has to be blocked up +with stones, even though the persistent bell is clanging down over the +fields. + +Perhaps a big frog will push out from the grass and go in fat leaps +down to the water--plop! and away he swims with his sarcastic nose up +and his legs going like fury. The strange, very-little-boy motions of +a frog in water is a thing to ponder over. There are small frogs also, +every bit as interesting, thin-legged, round-bellied anatomies who try +to jump two ways at once when they are observed, and are caught so +easily that it is scarcely worth one's trouble to chase them at all. + +Just where the path turned there was an arch under which the river +flowed.--It was covered in with an iron grating. Surely it was a place +of mystery. Through the bars the dark, swirling waters were dimly +visible--there were things in there. Black lumps rose out of the +water, and, for a little distance, the slimy, shimmering, cold-looking +walls could be seen. Beyond there was a deeper gloom, and, beyond that +again, a blank, mysterious darkness. Through the grating the voice of +the stream came back with a strange note. On the outside, under the +sun, it was a tinkle and a rush, a dance indeed, but within it was a +low snarl that deepened to a grim whisper. There was an edge of malice +to the sound: something dark and very terrible brooded on the face of +those hidden waters. It was the home of surmise.--What might there not +be there? There might be gully-holes where the waters whirled in wide +circles, and then flew smoothly down, and down, and down. If one could +have got in there to see! To crawl along by the slippery edge in the +darkness and solitude! It was very hard to get away from this place. + +A little farther on two goats were tethered. As one passed they would +cease to pluck the grass and begin to dance slowly, such dainty, antic +steps, with their heads held down and their pale eyes looking upwards +with a joke in them. They did not really want to fight; they wanted to +play but were too shy to admit it. + +And here the schoolhouse was in sight. The bell had stopped: it was +now time to run. + +He gripped the mouth of his satchel with one hand to prevent the lesson +books from jumping out as he ran, he gripped his pocket with the other +hand to prevent his lunch from being jolted into the road. + +Another few yards and he was at the gate--some one was glaring out +through a window. It was a big face rimmed with spectacles and +whiskers--a master. He knew that when yonder severe eye had lifted +from him it had dropped to look at a watch, and he also knew exactly +what the owner of the severe eye would say to him as he sidled in. + + + + + THE MOON + + If the Moon had a hand + I wonder would she + Stretch it down unto me? + + If she did, I would go + To her glacier land, + To her ice-covered strand. + + I would run, I would fly, + Were the cold ever so, + And be warm in the snow. + + O Moon of all Light, + Sailing far, sailing high + In the infinite sky. + + Do not come down to me, + Lest I shriek in affright, + Lest I die in the night + Of your chill ecstasy. + + + + +THERE IS A TAVERN IN THE TOWN + +I + +The old gentleman entered, and was about to sit down, when a button +became detached from some portion of his raiment and rolled upon the +floor. He picked the button up and observed that he would keep it for +his housekeeper to sew on, and, while speaking on the strangeness of +housekeeping and buttons, he came slowly to the subject of matrimony-- + +"Like so many other customs," said he, "marriage is not native to the +human race, nor is it altogether peculiar to it. So far as I am aware +no person was ever born married, and in extreme youth bachelors and +spinsters are so common as to call for no remark. Nature strives, not +for duality as in the case of the Siamese Twins but for individuality. +We are all born strongly separated, and I am often inclined to fancy +that this ceremony of joining appears very like flying in the face of +Providence. I have also thought, on the other hand, that the +segregation of humanity into male and female is not an economic +practice, but I fear the foundation of the sex habit is by this time so +deeply trenched in our natures as to be practically ineradicable. + +"Throughout nature the male and female habit is usual: all beasts are +born of one or the other gender, and this is also the case in the +vegetable kingdom: but I am not aware that the ridiculous and wasteful +preparations with which we encumber matrimony obtain also among plants +and animals. Certainly, among some animals courtship, as we understand +it, is practised--Wolves, for instance, are an extraordinarily acute +people who make good husbands and fathers, and in these relations they +display a tenderness and courtesy which one only acquainted with their +out-of-door manners would scarcely credit them with. Their courtship +is conducted under circumstances of extraordinary rigour. A he-wolf +who becomes enamoured of a female from another tribe is forced, in +attempting to wed her, to set his life upon the venture, and, +disdaining all the fury of her numerous relatives, he must forcibly +detach her from her family, kill or maim all her other suitors, sustain +in a wounded and desperate condition a prolonged chase over the +snow-clad Russian Steppes, and, ultimately, consummate his nuptials, if +he can, with as many limbs as his lady's family have failed to collect +off him. This is a courtship admirably fitted to evolve a hardy and +Spartan race strong in the virtues of reliance and self-control. + +"Spiders, on the other hand, are a people whom I despise on several +counts, but must admire on others. They conduct their love affairs in +an even more tragic style. In every event matrimony is a tragedy, but +in the case of spiders it is a catastrophe. Spiders are a very sour +and pessimistic people who live in walls, corners of hotel bedrooms and +holes generally, in which places they weave very delicate webs, and sit +for a long period in a state of philosophic ecstasy, contemplating the +infinite. Their principal pastimes are killing flies and committing +suicide--both of which games should be encouraged. Like so many other +unhappy creatures they are born with a gender from which there is no +escape. The male spider is very much smaller than the female, and he +does not care greatly for his life. When he does not desire to live +any longer he commits matrimony or suicide. He weds a large and fierce +wife, who, when in expectation of progeny, kills him, and, being a +thorough-going person as all females are, she also eats him, possibly +at his own request, and thus she relieves her husband of the tedium of +existence and herself of the necessity for seeking immediate victual. +I do not know whether male spiders are very plentiful or extremely +scarce, but I cite this as an example of the extravagance and economy +of the female gender. + +"Of the courting habits of fish I have scanty knowledge. Fish are very +ugly, dirty creatures who appear to live entirely in water, and they +have been known to follow a ship for miles in the disgusting hope of +garbage being thrown to them by the steward. Their chief pastime is +weighing each other, for which purpose they are liberally provided with +scales. They can be captured by nets, or rods and lines, or, when they +are cockles, they can be captured by the human hand, but, in this +latter case, they cannot be tamed, having very little intelligence. +The cockle has no scale, and feels the deprivation keenly, hiding +himself deep in the sea and seldom venturing forth except at +night-time. He is composed of two shells and a soft piece, is chiefly +useful for poisoning children and is found at Sandymount, a place where +nobody but a cockle would live. Other fish may be generally described +as, crabs, pinkeens, red herrings and whales. How these conduct their +matrimonial adventures I do not know--the statement that whales are +fond of pinkeens is true only in a food sense, for these races have +never been observed to intermarry. + +"A great many creatures capture or captivate their mates by +singing.--These are usually, but not always, birds, and include wily +wagtails, larks, canary birds and the crested earwig. Poets, music +hall comedians and cats may also be included in this category. Dogs +are imperative and dashing wooers, but they seldom sing. Peacocks +expand their tails before the astonished gaze of their brides, showing +how the female sex is over-borne by minor, unimportant advantages. +Frogs, I believe, make love in the dark, which is a wise thing for them +to do--they are very witty folk, but confirmed sentimentalists. +Grocers' assistants attract their mates by exposing very tall collars +and brown boots. Drapers' assistants follow suit, with the comely +addition of green socks and an umbrella--they are never known to fail. +Some creatures do not marry at all. At a certain period they break in +two halves, and each half, fully equipped for existence, waggles away +from the other.--They are the only perfectly happy folk of whom I am +aware. For myself, I was born single and I will remain so, I will +never be a slave to the disgusting habit of matrimony." + +Having said this with great firmness, the old gentleman shed two more +buttons from his waistcoat, and, after sticking three nails and a piece +of twine through his garments, he departed very happily. The +gentleman-in-waiting sneezed three times in a loud voice, and gave a +war-whoop, but I took no notice of these impertinences. + + +II + +I had not seen the old gentleman for a long time, and when he entered +with one foot in a boot and the other in a carpet slipper, I was +overjoyed. When the bubbling tankard which I had ordered was placed +before him he seized my two hands, wrung them heartily and dashed into +the following subject-- + +"It must be remembered," said he, "that dancing is not an art but a +pastime, and should, therefore, be freed from the too-burdensome +regulations wherewith an art is encumbered. An art is a +highly-specialised matter hedged in on every side by intellectual +policemen, a pastime is not specialised, and never takes place in the +presence of policemen, who are well known to be the sworn enemies of +gaiety. For example, theology is an art but religion is a pastime: we +learn the collects only under compulsion, but we sing anthems because +it is pleasant to do so. Thus, eating oysters is an art by dint of the +elaborate ceremonial including shell-openers, lemons, waiters and +pepper, which must be grouped around your oyster before you can +conveniently swallow him, but eating nuts, or blackberries, or a +privily-acquired turnip--these are pastimes. + +"The practice of dancing is of an undoubted antiquity. History teems +with reference to this custom, but it is difficult to discover what +nationality or what era first witnessed its evolution. I myself +believe that the first dance was performed by a domestic hen who found +an ostrich's egg, and bounded before Providence in gratitude for +something worthy of being sat upon. + +"In all places and in all ages dancing has been utilised as a first-aid +to language. The function of language is intellectual, that of dancing +is emotional. It is scarcely possible to say anything of an emotional +nature in words without adventuring into depths or bogs of +sentimentality from which one can only emerge greasy with dishonour. +When we are happy we cannot say so with any degree of intelligibility: +in such a context the spoken word is miserably inadequate, and must be +supplemented by some bodily antic. If we are merry we must skip to be +understood. If we are happy we must dance. If we are wildly and +ecstatically joyous then we will become creators, and some new and +beneficent dance-movements will be added to the repertory of our +neighborhood. + +"Children will dance upon the slightest provocation, so also do lambs +and goats; but policemen, and puckauns, and advertisement agents, and +fish do not dance at all, and this is because they have hard hearts. +Worms and Members of Parliament, between whom, in addition to their +high general culture, there is a singular and subtle correspondence, do +not dance, because the inelastic quality of their environment forbids +anything in the nature of freedom. Frogs, dogs, and very young +mountains do dance. + +"A frog is a most estimable person. He has a cold body but a warm +heart, and a countenance of almost parental benevolence, and the joy of +life moves him to an almost ceaseless activity. I can never observe a +frog on a journey without fancying that his gusto for travel is +directed by a philanthropic impulse towards the bedside of a sick +friend or a meeting to discuss the Housing of the Working Classes. He +has danced all the way to, he will dance all the way from his +objective, but the spectacle of many men dancing is provocative of +pain.--To them dancing is a duty, and a melancholy one. If one danced +to celebrate a toothache one might take lessons from them. They stand +in the happy circle, their features are composed to an iron gravity, +their hands are as rigid as those of a graven image, and then, the +fatal moment having arrived, they agitate their legs with a cold fury +which is distinctly unpleasant. Having finished they dash their +partners from their sides and retire to blush and curse in a corner. + +"When a man dances he should laugh and crow and snap his fingers and +make faces; otherwise, he is not dancing at all, he is taking exercise. +No person should be allowed to dance without first swearing that he +feels only six years of age. People who admit to feeling more than ten +years old should be sent to hospital, and any one proved guilty of +fourteen years of age should be lodged in gaol without the option. + +"It is peculiar how often opposite emotions may meet on a common plane +of expression. The extremes of love and hate strive to get equally +close to kiss or to bite the object of their regard. Work and play may +be equally strenuous and equally enthralling. Hunger and satiety unite +in a common boredom. A happy person will dance from sheer delight, and +the man in whom a pin has been secreted can only by dancing express the +exquisite sensibility of his cuticle. Whatever one does or refrains +from doing one must be tired by bed-time--it is a law--but one may be +pleasantly tired. + +"I will suspect the morals of a man who cannot dance. I will look +curiously into his sugar or statecraft. I will impeach his candour or +reticence, and sneer at his method of lighting a fire unless he can +frolic when he goes out for a walk with a dog--that is the beginning of +dancing: the end of it is the beginning of a world. A young dog is a +piece of early morning disguised in an earthly fell, and the man who +can resist his contagion is a sour, dour, miserable mistake, without +bravery, without virtue, without music, with a cranky body and a +shrivelled soul, and with eyes incapable of seeing the sunlight. + +"I have often thought that dogs are a very superior race of people. +They are certainly more highly organised on the affectional plane than +man. A dog will love you just for the fun of it--and that is virtue. +Pat a dog on the head and he will dance around you in an ecstasy of +good-fellowship. Let us, at least, be the equal of these sagacities. +Let us put away our false intellectual pride. Let us learn to be +unconscious. The average man trembles into a dance imagining that all +eyes are rayed upon him wonderingly or admiringly, whereas, in truth, +he will only be looked at if he dances very well or very badly. Both +of these extremities of perfection ought to be avoided. We should +exercise our very bad or very good qualities in solitude lest average +people be saddened by their disabilities in either direction. Let your +curses be as private as your prayers for both are purgative operations. +In public we must conform to the standard, in private only may we do +our best or our worst. Acting so, we will be freed from false pride +and cowardly self-consciousness. Let us be brave. Let us caress the +waists of our neighbours without fear. Let everybody's chin be our +toy. Let us pat one another on the hats as we pass in the melancholy +streets.--Thus only shall we learn to be gay and careless who for so +long have been miserable and suspicious. We will be fearless and +companionable who have been so timid and solitary. A new, a better, a +real police force will arrest people who don't dance as they travel to +and from their labour. The world will be happy at last, and +civilisation will begin to be possible." + +Here, in an ecstasy of good-fellowship, the old gentleman seized his +pewter with his left hand and my glass with his right hand, and he +emptied them both before recognising his mistake. I had, however, run +out of tobacco, whereupon he became very angry, and refused to bid me +good-night. + + +III + +The old gentleman condescended to accept the last cigar which I had, +and, having lit it with my only match, he earnestly advised me never to +smoke to excess, because this indulgence brought spots before the eyes, +deteriorated the moral character, and was, moreover, exceedingly +expensive.--On the subject of smoking and tobacco he spoke as follows-- + +"I have observed that people who do not smoke are usually of a sour and +unsociable disposition. All red-haired people smoke naturally, and +they almost invariably use cut-plug. Very dark-haired men smoke twist, +and their natural strength and virtue is such that in the intervals of +smoking they also chew tobacco. Fair-haired men generally smoke +cigarettes--they do this, not for the purpose of enjoyment, but purely +in imitation of their betters. However, in later life, when they +become bald, as they invariably do, they also became regenerate and +smoke pig-tail. Men with mouse-coloured hair do not smoke at all. +They collect postage stamps and sea-shells, and are usually to be found +sitting round a fire with other girls eating chocolates and seeking for +replies to such questions as, when is a door not a door? and why does a +chicken cross the road? They are miserable creatures whom I will not +further mention. + +"The usage of tobacco, or some smokable substitute, is as old as +primitive man. Almost all nations of the earth are adepts in this +particular habit. It is, of course, an acquired taste, as also are +washing and tomatoes. We are born with appetites which are static and +unchangeable, but we are also born with a yearning for pleasure which +is almost as positive as an appetite and only needs cultivation to +become equally imperative. Doubtless, a traveller from some distant +planet, who knew nothing of tobacco, would be astonished at the +spectacle of a man exhaling smoke from his lips with splendid +unconcern, and our traveller's conjectures as to the origin of the +smoke and the immunity of the smoker would be highly amusing and +instructive. + +"I am often surprised on reflecting that our immediate ancestors were +debarred from this pleasant indulgence, and I have wondered how they +made the evenings pass. The lack of tobacco and pockets in their +clothes (both of which are great civilising agents) may have been +responsible for the wars, harryings, kidnappings and cattle raids +which, alternating with rigorous and austere religious ceremonial, +formed the bulk of their pleasures. Nowadays we leave these violent +entertainments to children and the semi-literate and take our pleasures +more composedly. A man who can put his hands in his pockets will +seldom remove them for the purpose of slaying some one whose only fault +is that he was born in the County Sligo. A man with a pipe in his +teeth will be too much at peace with society to endanger its existence. + +"If the blessings of tobacco should be extended to the remainder of the +vertebrates (as, why should it not?) I am sure that lions, elephants, +and wild boars would avail themselves of it. So, also, would +kangaroos, a beautiful and agile race living in Polynesia, or +thereabouts--they are beautiful hoppers, and collect large quantities +of this plant. In this direction they are especially well equipped, +each having a pouch in her stomach in which to carry tobacco and hops, +but wherein they now ignorantly secrete their young. Serpents would +smoke a pipe with considerable elegance, and might become more +benevolent in consequence. Frogs would smoke, but I fancy they would +expectorate too elaborately to be neighbourly. Fish, however, would +not smoke at all.--They are a cowardly and corrupt people, living in +water, which is a singular thing to do. Neither would many birds +smoke, they have neither the stamina nor the teeth, but I am certain +that crows and jackdaws would chew tobacco eagerly and with true +relish. A large proportion of the insecta are too light-minded and +frivolous to care for smoking. Beetles, however, a very reserved and +dignified race, would smoke cigars, and so would cockroaches, a rather +saturnine and cynical people; but no others. + +"As for women--I am astonished they have not smoked, by mere contagion, +long ago. If they did they would certainly grow more kind-hearted and +manly, and I am sure that a deputation of ladies with pipes in their +mouths and hands in their pockets would only have to demand the +franchise from an astounded ministry to obtain it. + +"Members of Parliament are, I believe, either a separate creation or a +composite of the parrot and the magpie. I have not yet discovered +their particular function in nature but have observed them with some +particularity. They wear top hats and are constantly making speeches, +both of which are easy things to do and quite pleasant minor +accomplishments.--So far as I can gather their chief use has been to +pass something called a Budget. From the fact that this Budget +contains a disgraceful imposition on tobacco I must take it that +Members of Parliament are among the lower animals who do not +smoke--they are also uninteresting in other ways." + +Having said this my old friend bowed to me and departed genially with +my cigar case in his pocket. The shirt-sleeved Adonis behind the +counter wagged his head solemnly at a fly and then clouted it with a +dish-cloth. + + +IV + +The old gentleman took an athletic pull at his liquor, and continued +his discourse. He had been discussing more to himself than to me the +merits of Professor James and Monsieur Bergson, and had inquired was I +aware of the nature of the Pragmatic Sanction. The gentleman behind +the counter remarked, that he had one on his bicycle, but that they +were no good. This statement was denounced by the Philosopher as an +unnatural and clumsy falsehood, and, anathematising the ignorance of +his interrupter, he came by slow degrees to the following discourse-- + +"I have but little faith in any of the methods of education with which +I am presently acquainted. The objective of every system of teaching +should be to enable the person who is being subjected to this repulsive +treatment to do something which will fit him to maintain a place in +life where he will be as little liable as possible to the changes and +vicissitudes of civilised existence. + +"The cumbrous and inadequate preparation which is now in vogue can +scarcely be spoken of by a person of understanding without the use of +language unbefitting one who is a member of (inter alia) the Reformed +Church and the highest order of the vertebrates. + +"If one walks into any school in this kingdom one is certain to meet a +tall, thin, anaemic youth with a draggled moustache and a worried eye +who is endeavouring to coerce a mass of indigestible, inelastic and +unimportant facts into the heads of divers sleepy and disgusted +children. If a small boy, on being asked where Labrador is, replies +that it is the most northerly point of the Berlin Archipelago, he may +be wrong in quite a variety of ways, but even if he answered correctly +he would still know just as little about the matter, while if he were +to give the only proper reply to so ridiculous a conundrum, he would +tell his tormentor that he did not care a rap where it was, that he had +not put it there, and that he would tell his mother if the man did not +leave him alone. What has he got to do with Labrador, Terra del Fuego, +or the Isles of Greece? Give him a fistful of facts about Donnybrook, +and send him away to hunt out the truth of it, with a sandwich in his +pocket and the promise of a lump of toffee when he came back with his +cargo of truths--that would interest him, the toffee would make the +information stick, while the verification of his facts would make his +head fat and fertile. + +"When we ceased to be natural creatures and put on the oppressive +shrouds, wraps and disguises which we label in the villainous aggregate +civilisation, we ceased to know either how to teach or how to learn. +We exchanged the freedom and spaciousness of life for a cramped +existence compounded of spectacles and bad grammar, this complicated +still further by the multiplication tables, the dead languages and +indigestion tabloids. During his school-days many a healthy boy had to +parse ten square miles of dead language. Why? he does not know and he +will never be told, for no one else knows any more than he. The only +thing of which he is certain is, that he did not do anything to deserve +it. + +"Civilisation, which is responsible for all the woes of life, such as +washing, shaving and buying boots, is responsible for this also. +Potatoes are more productive than Latin roots, are twice as nourishing +and cannot be parsed. Teach a girl how to recognise an egg by the +naked eye, and then teach her how to cook it. Teach a boy how to +discover the kind of trees eggs grow on and what is the best kind of +soil to plant them in. Teach a girl how to keep her hands from +scratching, her tongue from telling lies, and her teeth from dropping +out prematurely, and she will, maybe, turn out a healthy kind of mammal +having a house filled with brightness and laughter. Teach a boy how to +prevent another boy from mashing the head off him, teach him how to be +good to his mother when she is old, teach him how to give two-pence to +a beggar without imagining that he is investing his savings in Paradise +at fifty per cent and a bonus; and then, having eliminated +civilisation, education, clothes, tin whistles and soap this earth will +not be such a bad old ball-alley for a man to smoke a pipe in. + +"Everything is wrong. People should rise to their feet and salute when +a farmer or a teacher comes into a room. No man should be allowed into +Parliament who has not engaged in one or other of these professions, +but because they are the two most important professions in the world +their exponents are robbed and harried into slaves and fools." + +Having said this with great earnestness the old gentleman +absent-mindedly impounded my drink, absorbed it, and strode away +wrapped in thought. The gentleman-in-waiting sympathetically asked me +if I would have another one, but on learning that I had no more money +he said good-night. + + +V + +The old gentleman was in a state of most unusual content. It might +have been because the sun was shining, or it might have been because he +had just finished his third glass: whatever it was, the smile upon his +face was of a depth and a radiance impossible to describe. He spoke +for a while upon the pleasant smell of hay passing through a city, and, +remarking upon the enviable thirst of hay-makers, he swept gradually to +the following weighty monologue-- + +"From the earliest times," said he, "drinking has been regarded not +alone as a necessary lubricant, but also as a pastime, and the +ingenuity of every race under the sun has been exercised in the attempt +to give variety and distinction to its beverages. + +"We may take it that the earliest race of men drank nothing but water, +and hot water to boot, for at that era the earth must have been, if not +hot, at least tepid. One can easily imagine that the contemporaries of +the five-toed horse might have welcomed death as a happy release from +their too sultry existence. + +"I suppose man is the only brewing animal known to scientific research. +All other creatures take their food and drink neat, or in a raw state. +Of course, almost all mammals are enabled by a highly ingenious +internal mechanism to brew milk, or some other lacteal substitute, but +this is performed by a natural, instinctive impulse towards the +preservation of their young and conserves none of the spirit of +artifice and calculation so necessary to authentic brewing operations. + +"Brewing was possible only when the stability of the human race was, +more or less, assured and permanent. Our primal ancestors existed in a +state as nearly resembling chaos as well might be. They had not yet +aggregated into communities, but vast hordes of families--a father, an +uncertain number of mothers, and an astounding complexity of +children--wandered wherever food seemed most abundant, and fought with +or eluded such other families as they chanced upon. This state of +existence was too precarious and haphazard to allow of the niceties of +brewing being evolved. + +"But the natural tendency of families to lengthen, the gregarious +instincts of the race, and the need of mutual protection and assistance +ultimately welded these indiscriminate families into communities of +ever-varying extent, and the movement of these huge troops and +transportation of their baggage becoming more and more difficult +(vehicles being unknown and horses, perhaps, treble-toed, wily and +ferocious) and food, which until then had only been obtained in a +fugitive state, becoming less easy of access, these communities were +forced to select a settled habitation, scratch the earth for provender, +settled down to the breeding of one-toed horses, and exercise the +respectable virtues of thrift and industry for their preservation. +Thus, laws were formulated, tentative and unsatisfactory at first, and +ever tending, as to this day, to become more complex and less +satisfactory. Villages took shape, straggled into towns, widened into +cities and coalesced into kingdoms and empires: and so, the +civilisation of which we are partakers crawled laboriously into being, +with the brewer somewhere in the centre, active, rubicund and +disputatious, as he has continued to date, with a seat on the County +Council which he had swindled some thirsty statesman out of, and more +property than he could deal with by himself. + +"It is a singular reflection that thirst has very little to do with the +consumption of drink, nor is this appetite subject to the vagaries of +climate, for the inhabitants of the coldest regions will, it is feared, +drink on equal terms with those dwelling in the sun-burnt tropics. In +almost all ceremonial observances drinking has had a special place, and +this diversion lends itself to an infinite number of objects--we can +from the same bowl quaff health to our friends and confusion to our +enemies, doubtless with equal results. Here alone men meet on equal +terms. There is no religion, nationality or politics in liquor: let it +be but sufficiently wet and potent and it matters not if the brew has +been fermented in the tub of a Christian or the vessel of a heathen +Turk. + +"I understand that this latter race are forbidden, by the form of +heresy which they call religion, to use liquors more potent than +sherbet. Some thinkers believe that this deprivation is possibly the +reason of their being Turks.--They are Turks, not from conviction, but +from habit, spite, and the bile engendered by a too rigid and bigoted +abstinence. In this belief, however, I do not concur, for I consider +that a Turk is a Turk naturally, and without any further constraint +than those imposed by the laws of geography and primogeniture. + +"Meanwhile it is interesting to speculate on the future of an abstinent +nation whose politics have the misfortune to be guided by a Peerage +instead of a Beerage, and whose national destiny is irrationally +divorced from the interests of 'The Trade.' Any departure from the +established customs of humanity must be criticised unsparingly, and, if +necessary, destructively. To overthrow the customs of antiquity must +entail its own punishment and that punishment may be an awe-inspiring +and chastening Success. Therefore, this happy whisky-governed land of +ours should never forsake its liquor or it may be forced by opportunity +and work to become great. The foundations of our civilisation are +steeped in beer--let no sacrilegious hand seek to interfere with it, +for, even if the foundations were rotten, the interests of the Trade +must not be disturbed, the grave and learned members of our Corporation +might be horribly reduced to working for their living, and our +unfortunate City might have the extraordinary misfortune to scramble +out of debt in the absence of its statesmen." + +The old gentleman, with a bright smile, said that "he did not mind if +he did," and he "did" with such gusto that I had to call a cab. + + +VI + +The old gentleman came in hurriedly and called for that to which he was +accustomed. He fumbled in one pocket after another, and after going over +all his pockets several times he remarked to me "I have forgotten my +purse." His air was so friendly and confiding that it more than repaid +me for the small sum which I had to advance. He sat down close beside +me, and, after touching on the difficulty of being understood in a +tavern, he drew genially to these remarks-- + +"Language may be described as a medium for recording one's sensations. +It is gesture translated into sound. It is noise with a meaning. Music +cannot at all compare with it, for music is no more than the scientific +distribution of noise, and it does not impart any meaning to the +disintegrated and harried tumults. Language may be divided into several +heads, which, again, may be subdivided almost indefinitely.--The primary +heads are, language, talk, and speech. Speech is the particular form of +noise which is made by Members of Parliament. Language is the symbols +whereby one lady in a back street makes audible her impressions of the +lady who lives on the same floor--it is often extremely sinewy. Talk may +be described as the crime of people who make one tired. + +"It is my opinion that people talk too much. I think the world would be +a healthier and better place if it were more silent. On every day that +passes there is registered over all the earth a vast amount of language +which, so far as I can see, has not the slightest bearing on anything +anywhere. + +"I have been told of a race living in Central Africa, or elsewhere, who +by an inherent culture were enabled to dispense with speech. They +whistled, and by practice had attained so copious and flexible a +vocabulary that they could whistle good-morning and good-night, or +how-do-you-do with equal facility and distinction. This, while it is a +step in the right direction, is not a sufficiently long step. To live +among these people might appear very like living in a cageful of canaries +or parrots. Parrots are a very superior race who usually travel with +sailors. They have a whistle which can be guided or deflected into +various by-ways. I once knew a parrot who was employed by a sailor-man +to curse for him when his own speech was suspended by liquor. He could +also whistle ballads and polkas, and had attained an astonishing +proficiency in these arts; for, by long practice, he could dovetail +curses and whistles in a most energetic and, indeed, astonishing manner. +It would often project two whistles and a curse, sometimes two curses and +a whistle, while all the time keeping faithfully to the tune of 'The +Sailor's Grave' or another. It was a highly cultivated and erudite +person. As it advanced in learning it took naturally to chewing tobacco, +but, being a person of strongly experimental habits, it tried one day to +curse and whistle and chew tobacco at the one moment, with the +unfortunate result that a piece of honeydew got jammed between a whistle +and a curse, and the poor thing perished miserably of strangulation. + +"It is indeed singular that while every race of mankind is competent to +speak, none of the other races, such as cats, cows, caterpillars, and +crabs, have shown the slightest interest in the making of this ordered +noise. This is the more strange when we reflect that almost all animals +are provided with a throat and a mouth which are capable of making a +noise certainly equal in volume and intelligibility to the sounds made by +a German or a Spaniard. + +"Long ago men lived in trees and had elongated backbones which they were +able to twitch. There were no shops, theatres, or churches in those +times, and, consequently, no necessity for a specialized and meticulous +prosody. Man barked at his fellow-man when he wanted something, and if +his request was not understood he bit his fellow-man and was quit of him. +When they forsook the trees and became ground-walkers they came into +contact with a variety of theretofore unknown objects, the necessity for +naming which so exercised their tongues that gradually their bark took on +a different quality and became susceptible of more complicated sounds. +Then, with the dawning of the Pastoral Age, food in a gregarious +community became a matter of more especial importance. When a man barked +at his wife for a cocoanut and she handed him a baby or a bowl of soup or +an evening paper it became necessary, in order to minimise her +alternatives, that he should elaborate his bark to meet this and an +hundred other circumstances. I do not know at what period of history man +was able to call his wife names with the certainty of reprisal. It was +possible quite early, because I have often heard a dog bark in a +dissatisfied and important manner at another dog and be perfectly +comprehended. + +"A difficulty would certainly arise as to the selection of a word when +forty or fifty men might at the same time label any article with as many +different names, and, it is reasonable to suppose, that they would be +reluctant to adopt any other expression but that of their own creation. +In such a crux the strongest man of the community would be likely to +clout the others to an admission that his terminology was standard. + +"Thus, by slow accretions, the various languages crept into currency, and +the youth of innumerable schoolboys has been embittered by having to +learn to spell. + +"Grasshoppers are a fine, sturdy race of people. A great many of them +live on the Hill of Howth, where I have often spent hours hearkening to +their charming conversation. They do not speak with the same machinery +that we use--they convey their ideas to each other by rubbing their +hind-legs together, whereupon noises are produced of exceeding variety +and interest. As a method of speech this is simply delightful, and I +wish we could be trained to converse in so majestical a manner. Perhaps +we shall live to see the day when the journals will chronicle that Mr. +Redmond had rubbed his legs together for three hours at the Treasury +Bench and was removed frothing at the feet, but after a little rest he +was enabled to return and make more noise than ever." + +The old gentleman smiled very genially and went out. The assistant +suggested that he had a terrible lot of old "guff," but I did not agree +with him. + + +VII + +Between impartial sips at his own and my liquor the old gentleman +perused the small volume which he had taken from my pocket. After he +had read it he buttoned the book in his own pouch and addressed me with +great kindness-- + +"In some respects," said he, "poets differ materially from other +animals. For instance, they seldom marry, and when they do it is only +under extreme compulsion.--This is the more singular when we remember +that poets are almost continually singing about love. When they do +marry they instantly cease to make poetry and turn to labour like the +rest of the community. + +"It has been finely said that the poet is born and not made, but I +fancy that this might be postulated of the rest of creation. + +"Many people believe that all poets arise from their beds in the middle +of the night, and that they walk ten miles until they come to a +hillside, where they remain until the dawn whistling to the little +birds; but this, while it is true in some instances, is not invariably +true. A proper poet would not walk ten miles for any one except a +publisher. + +"The art of writing poetry is very difficult at first, but it becomes +easy by practice. The best way for a beginner is to take a line from +another poem; then he should construct a line to fit it; then, having +won his start, he should strike out the first line (which, of course, +does not belong to him) and go ahead. When the poet has written three +verses of four lines each he should run out and find a girl somewhere +and read it to her. Girls are always delighted when this is done. +They usually clasp their hands together as though in pain, roll their +eyes in an ecstasy, and shout, 'How perfectly perfect!' Then the poet +will grip both her hands very tightly and say he loves her but will not +marry her, and, in an agony of inspiration, he will tear himself away +and stand drinks to himself until he is put out. This is, of course, +only one way of being a poet. If he perseveres he will ultimately +write lyrics for the music halls and make a fortune. He will then wear +a fur coat that died of the mange, he will support a carnation in his +buttonhole, wear eighteen rings on his right hand and one hundred and +twenty-seven on his left. He will also be entitled to wear two +breast-pins at once and yellow boots. He will live in England when he +is at home, and be very friendly with duchesses. + +"Poetry is the oldest of the arts. Indeed, it may be called the parent +of the arts. Poetry, music, and dancing are the only relics which have +come down to us from those ancient times which are termed impartially +the Golden or the Arboreal Ages. In ancient Ireland the part played by +the poet was very important. Not alone was he the singer of songs, he +was also the bestower of fame and the keeper of genealogies, and, +therefore, he was treated with a dignity which he has since refused to +forget. When a poet made a song in public, it was customary that the +king and the nobility should divest themselves of their jewels, gold +chains, and rings, and give this light plunder to him. They also +bestowed on him goblets of gold and silver, herds of cattle, farms, and +maidservants. The poets are not at all happy in these constricted +times, and will proclaim their astonishment and repugnance in the +roundest language. + +"A few days ago I was speaking in Grafton Street to a poet of great +eminence, and, with tears in his voice, he told me that he had never +been offered as much as a bracelet by any lady. Times have changed; +but for the person who still wishes to enter this decayed profession +there is still every opportunity, for poetry is only the art of cutting +sentences into equal lengths, and then getting these sentences printed +by a publisher. It is in the latter part of this formula that the real +art consists. + +"There are a great many poets in Ireland, particularly in Dublin. In +an evening's walk one may meet at least a dozen of this peculiar +people. They may be known by the fact that they wear large, soft hats, +and that the breast-pockets of their coats have a more than noticeable +bulge, due to their habit of carrying therein the twenty-seven +masterpieces which they have just written. They are very ethereal +creatures, composed largely of soul and thirst. Soul is a far-away, +eerie thing, generally produced by eating fish." + +The old gentleman borrowed the price of a tram home; but as he +instantly stood himself a drink with it, I was forced to relend him the +money when we got outside. + + +VIII + +The old gentleman was in a very bad temper when I arrived. He had a +large glass of porter in his hand--a pint, in fact--and he was gazing +on this liquid with no great favour. I was a little surprised at his +choice of a drink, for I had never before known him care for any other +refreshment than spirits; but I did not like to make any reference to +the change. Looking thus, with great disgust, upon his pint, he began +to talk with some asperity about the English nation. + +"The ways of Providence," said he, "are indeed inscrutable, else why +should there be such things in the world as lobsters, gutta-percha, +ballet-dancers, and Englishmen? These four objects, and some +others--notably water, tram-cars, and warts--I can find no necessity +for in nature; but there must be some reason for such, or else they +could not have arrived at the more or less mature stage of development +at which they are found. + +"If we apply the canons of the Pragmatic philosophy to these objects we +will arrive at some conclusion which, although it may not justify their +existence, will give a hint as to their expediency. The question to be +put to any doubtful fact in nature is this--'What is your use?' and the +reality of the fact is in ratio to the degree of usefulness inhering in +it. Thus treated, most of the objects to which I have referred may be +able to adduce some excuse for their existence. A lobster may aver +that if he were not alive his absence would be a severe blow to the +lobster-pot industry, and would throw many respectable families on the +already-overburdened rates. Gutta-percha might plead that it has +aspired through many millions of ages to a maturity which would enable +it to rub out lead-pencil marks. Ballet-dancers would have a great +deal to say for themselves, possibly on moral grounds; but I really see +no reason for Englishmen. + +"I have said that an object is real in ratio to its usefulness. If we +examine an Englishman thus pragmatically we must discover that his +usefulness is zero, and we are then forced to inquire why he exists at +all, for he does undoubtedly exist, as witness this pint of porter +which I hold in my hand, and which I do hold in my hand solely on +account of the unexplainable existence of Englishmen. + +"I may say at once that I never indulge in this particular form of +refreshment, against which I have nothing further to charge than it +does not agree with my system, but I am no bigot in such matters, and +can quite willingly believe that lower natures and less cultivated +palates may take pleasure in secreting this inordinately lengthy +liquid. I cannot avoid the belief that any liquid which may be imbibed +by the imperial pint is an essentially gross drink, and one unfitted +for persons of a high culture. Nor can I find in nature that any of +the more specialised organisms take their drink in such extravagant +quantities. Camels, who, I am informed, are a very well-behaved and +moral race leading rigorous and chaste lives in a desert, do drink +deeply, but their excess is more apparent than real, for Providence in +an aberration endowed these folk with more stomachs than the average +person possesses, and the necessity for filling these additional +cisterns accounts for and justifies their liberal use of moisture. +Worms, on the other hand, are a folk for whom I have very little +reverence and no affection. I am not aware whether they are all +stomach or all neck, but from their corner-boy expression I am inclined +to fancy that worms would drink pints if they could. Happily, this +disgusting exhibition is forbidden by the imperfect state of their +civilisation and the inelastic quality of their environment. + +"But this is beside the point. My grievance is, that in my old age I +am forced to drink porter which disagrees with my liver, and am +compelled to abstain from spirits which have a sustaining and medicinal +effect on that organ, and this deprivation is solely due to the +unnatural and inexplicable existence of Englishmen. It may be that +nature grew Englishmen for the sole purpose of interfering with my +organs, and so, by modifying my teaching in accordance with my diseased +interior, nature may be striving to evolve a new culture wherein bile +will have a rare ability. If this is so, then I am not at all obliged +to nature for singling me out as the instrument of her changes; if it +is not so I can only confess my ignorance and wash my hands of the +matter. + +"Mark you, it was only during my lifetime that an exorbitant tax was +placed on whisky. Before my era the interference with this refreshment +was of the most tentative and apologetic description. + +"I can remember, and I do remember with dismay, the time when whisky +was purchaseable at two bronze pennies for the naggin, but now one may +discharge a ruinous impost for the privilege of imbibing one poor +fourth of that happy measure. + +"This has been brought about by the continuous interference of +Englishmen with my liquor. Time and again they have added additional +difficulties to my obtaining this medicinal refreshment, and, while I +am compelled to bow my head to the ideas of nature for the improvement +of our race, I am often inclined, having bowed it, to charge goat-like +at these intolerable people and butt them off the face of the earth +into the nowhere for which their villainous and ungenial habits have +fitted them. Otherwise, by their future exactions I may be brought to +the drinking of benzene or printer's ink for lack of a fortune +wherewith to purchase fitter refreshment." + +Having said this with great fury, the old gentleman laid down his +untasted pint and stalked out. The acolyte behind the counter made a +sympathetic clicking noise with his tongue and sold the pint to another +man.--He probably did this thoughtlessly, and I did not care to +embarrass him by remarking on it. + + +IX + +I met the old gentleman marching solemnly across Cork Hill. There was +a tramcar in his immediate rear, a cab in front of him, an outside-car +and a bicycle on his right hand, and a dray laden with barrels on his +left. The drivers of all these vehicles were entreating him in one +voice to stroll elsewhere. He looked around and, observing that +matters were complicated, he opened his umbrella, held it over his +head, and awaited events with the most admirable fortitude. When I had +escorted him to the pavement, and further to his own hostelry, he +seized the third button of my waistcoat and spake as follows:-- + +"It is an admirable example of the wisdom of nature that she has +refrained in every case from equipping her creatures with wheels +instead of legs, and she might easily have done this. So far as I am +aware there are but four methods of progression in nature--these are, +flying, swimming, walking and crawling. None of these are performed +with a rotary motion, and all are admirably adapted to the people using +them, and are sufficiently expeditious to suit their needs. + +"There is no doubt that the most primitive of movements is that of +crawling, and by this method of progression, one is brought into an +intimate contact with the earth which cannot fail to be beneficial. I +do not see any real difficulty in the way of our again becoming a race +of happy and crawling people. The initial essay towards this end is to +shed our arms and legs as useless incumbrances, and then to aim at a +stronger growth of jaw and cranium. Among certain organisms it will be +found that the jaws are the most immediately useful parts of the body, +performing the most varied and delicate functions with the greatest +ease. A dog, for example, will, with the one organ, play with a ball, +kill a cat, or nip the calf of a Christian, and, when the moon is high, +he can make a noise with his mouth which is as loud and quite as +melodious as the professional clamour of a ballad-vocalist. + +"One of the greatest evils of civilisation is the longing for speed, +which, within the past hundred years, has developed from a simple vice +to a complicated mania. Long ago men were accustomed to use their legs +in order to propel themselves forward, and, when greater speed was +necessary, they assisted their legs with their hands--this was coeval +with, or shortly after, the arboreal age. Next came the hunting epoch, +when some person, probably a commercial traveller, dropped off a tree +on to a horse's back, and finding the movement pleasant he informed his +companions of his adventure and demonstrated to them how it had been +performed. It is from this occurrence we may date the degradation of +the human race and the industry of horse-stealing. There followed the +pastoral age, when nuts were, more or less, abandoned as a food and +tillage became general. The necessity for conveying the crops from the +field to the camp excited some lazy individual to invent a cart, and, +thus, wheels came into use and the doom of humanity as an instinctive +and natural race was sealed. + +"While we walked on our own legs we were natural and instinctive +creatures, open to every impression of nature and able to tell the time +without clocks, but when we adopted mechanical methods of progression +we became unnatural and mechanical people, whizzing restlessly and +recklessly from here to yonder, for no purpose save the mere sensual +pleasure of movement, and we are at this date simply debauched by +travel and have shortened the world to less than one-tenth of its +actual size as well as destroying our abilities for simple and rational +enjoyment. + +"If we continue using these artificial means of locomotion there is no +doubt that the race will become atrophied in the legs but with +extraordinary results. The spectacle of an egg-shaped humanity +squatting painfully on engines is not a pleasant one to contemplate, +nor is the prospect of a world wherein there will be neither breeches +nor boots good for the moralist or economist to dwell upon. + +"In order to conserve the happiness of the world every inventor should +be squashed in the egg, more particularly those having anything to do +with wheels, cogs or levers. The wheel has no counterpart in nature, +and is unthinkable to any but a diseased and curious mind. Man will +never more be happy until he has broken all the machinery he can find +with a hammer, and has then thrown the hammer into the sea; and then he +can, by experiment, become almost as rooted in the earth as a tree or +an artesian well. It is a bad thing to have an indefinite horizon. It +is a good thing to grow knowing one part of the world as thoroughly as +one knows the inside of one's boots. Legs make for nationality, +patriotism, and all the virtues which centre in locality. Wheels make +for diffuseness, imperialisms, cosmopolitanisms. By the use of legs +humanity has stalked into manhood. By the use of wheels we are rapidly +rolling into a race of commercial travellers, touts, gad-abouts, and +members of parliament, folk with the hanging jaws of astonishment, avid +for curios, and with mental, moral and optical indigestion. + +"I believe that the Spanyols and Mandibaloes, two Mongol races +inhabiting the countries at the rear of the Great Chow Desert, were the +first people to deal largely with wheels. The men of these nations +were used, when travelling, to affix two small wheels upon their +shoulder blades, and on coming to any slight incline in their path they +would curl up their legs, lie on their backs and free-wheel as +distantly as the slant of the ground permitted, greatly, no doubt, to +the astonishment of less sophisticated people. But, knowing their +habits, their enemies were wont to lie in wait at the bottoms of hills +and slopes, and when a Spanyol or Mandibaloe came wheeling down a hill +with his legs up he was killed before he could regain a less +complicated position, or one more fitted for defence or offence. Thus, +these races became rapidly extinct, and are now only remembered by the +tracks as wide as a man's shoulderblades which are occasionally found +in parts of the post-tertiary formation." + +The old gentleman released the third button of my waistcoat which he +had held for so long and stepped with me out of the hostel. As it had +begun to rain he carefully folded up his umbrella, tucked it under his +arm, and strode rapidly down the street. Some small boys followed him +for a little time singing, "We are the boys of Wexford who fought with +heart and hand," but I drove these away. + + +X + +He wiped his face with a large, red pocket-handkerchief, pursed his +lips, shut one eye, and, with the other, he critically observed the +remnant of his liquor. After a moment of deep consideration he smiled +delightfully and said he thought it was all right. The apothecary +behind the counter smiled also as one gratified and suggested that +there was not much of that at the North Pole, and, after a little +discussion on this point, the old gentleman addressed me in the +following words:-- + +"I do not understand what necessity impels people to the discovery of +something, which, if it has any existence at all, has only an +idealistic existence, and which, when it is discovered, cannot be +utilised in any possible direction. Utility is the first attribute of +all terrestrial bodies. A stone, for instance, is a useful inorganic +substance--it can be built into a house, or thrown at a duck, or, when +ground into sand, it can be, and is, sold as sugar by a grocer. It is +constantly being utilised in one or other of these directions; and so +with all other objects. But the necessity for a North or a South Pole +has yet to be demonstrated. + +"The statement that the North Pole was put there by the Castle +authorities is one which I do not believe, for I am assured that at +every period of the world's history there has been a North and a South +Pole, which, surrounded as they were by snow-clad countries, icebergs, +cold water and whales, were too remote and inhospitable to tempt the +average civilian to journey there. + +"The only thing which grows in the Polar regions is ice, and this is +generally found in almost tropical profusion and rankness, growing +sometimes to the height of several hundred feet, none of which wear +boots. Polar bears and Esquimos are also found there, but in scattered +and inconsiderable quantities. These two races spend most of their +time chasing each other in order to keep themselves warm, which they do +by degrees which are often registered on a barometer. They also eat +each other and get scurvy. Outside of these relaxations their +existence is stagnant and unexciting. I sometimes fancy that if I had +the misfortune to be born a polar bear or an Esquimo I would not have +been a patriot. + +"I have no esteem for ice in other than easily portable quantities. +Some small pieces to pack around fish, a particle to drop into a glass +of lager beer--that is all the ice which I can regard patiently or +leniently; but a continent composed entirely of ice and polar bears +tempts me to believe that Providence is subject to aberrations. + +"It is supposed to redound to the credit of a nation when one of its +citizens resolves to discover some inaccessible and futile place, and +proceeds to do so in the most fantastic manner. The inhabitants of +that country who remain at their work and continue to pay their rates +are expected to be in a condition of wild enthusiasm and delight at the +adventure.--My own impression is, that the majority of people take no +more than a tepid interest in these forlorn adventures, and are but +imperfectly convinced of the sanity of the adventurers; and this is the +more particularly noticeable when the quest is for something so +intangible and unmarketable as a North Pole. Why need they go so far +afield for their excitement? Every discoverer is a detective. He +traces missing places, and there are cartloads of Poles in their own +countries waiting for explorers. + +"The habit of seeking for a North Pole is one of only comparative +antiquity. Its conception is well within the historic era, and must, +therefore, be classed as an acquired habit and one not inherent in man. +I have not observed that any other animals are addicted to this +peculiar expeditionary craze. It is true that many species of birds +migrate annually from these shores, and, although their departures are +usually chronicled in the newspapers, it must not without further +evidence be inferred that these birds have gone to look for the North +Pole. They may, as a matter of fact, have left this country to avoid +being arrested, for here one is continually being arrested. The +evidence in favour of the North Pole theory as regards birds is, that +nobody knows where they have gone to, and that as the rest of the earth +is round and densely populated their arrival would be noted somewhere +as their departure was, but their arrival not being so noted, and as +they must be somewhere, the process of eliminating all possible places +leaves nowhere but the North Pole as their objective. Now birds are a +very intelligent and strenuous race of people who build nests in trees +and have often five eggs at a time, and I believe that they leave these +countries because their nests are full of broken egg-shells, and +because the winter is setting in, and because they dislike cold +weather; and, thus disliking cold weather, it is unlikely that they +would fly to the North Pole where the cold is very intense, and where, +moreover, there is little food to be found, saving polar bears and +Esquimos, a form of victual for which birds have only the scantiest +relish. My own impression is, that these birds when out of sight of +land are enabled by a mechanism with which we are not yet familiar, to +convert themselves into fishes, or, alternatively, that they know the +whereabouts of Tir na n-Og and go there, or else that they do not go +anywhere at all but are simply translated into the Fourth Dimension of +Space, and are, thus, flying, nesting and mating all around us in a +medium which our eyes are too gross to penetrate. + +"From a perusal of the evening papers I observe that the discoverer of +the North Pole is an American citizen with a complicated pedigree, a +long beard and a red shirt, all of which he hoisted to the top of the +Pole and left there for subsequent identification. I fear this was a +thoughtless action on his part because the Esquimos who live habitually +at the North Pole, but have not discovered it, will, while his back is +turned, take to wearing his shirt in turn. They are a communistic +people, I fancy, and no shirt will survive communism. Also, seeing the +fuss which is being made of their Pole, they may either hide it or sell +pieces of it to tourists as remembrancers. + +"The explorer should have cached his shirt and other memorials at the +foot of the Pole, built a cairn upon it, and shook cayenne pepper on +top of all to keep bears away--but it is useless to advise explorers." + +The ancient hereupon made a significant gesture to the curate, who +misinterpreted it, and brought more than he had required. He was very +much perturbed, for, as he explained, he had forgotten to bring his +purse with him. He consented, however, to use my purse for his needs, +and, after paying his shot, he, in an abstracted and melancholy manner, +put the change in his trouser pocket. There was only one shilling in +the purse so I did not like to draw his attention to the mistake. He +very genially returned my purse, and said he had conceived a great +liking for me. + + +XI + +When the old gentleman came in I noticed at once that he was out of +humour. He had a large scar on his chin, and three pieces of newspaper +on his cheeks. He discharged the contents of my tobacco pouch into a +pipe which had a holding capacity of one and a half ounces, and then he +became more cheerful-- + +"I dislike extremely," said he, "the impertinent interference with +nature which men are nowadays guilty of. Not content with clamping our +feet in leathern boxes, our legs in cloth cylinders, our trunks in a +variety of wrappings of complex inutility, and then inserting our heads +into monstrous felt pots, we even approach ourselves more minutely and +scrape the very hair from our faces which nature has sown there for +purposes of ornament and protection; with the result, that it is +difficult for a short-sighted person to distinguish rapidly the sex of +the people with whom he comes in contact saving by a minute and tedious +examination of their clothing. + +"This habit of shaving is one which is entirely confined to man. It is +the one particular habit that he holds apart from all other animals, +and, indeed, it is not an accomplishment upon which he need pride +himself, for in parting with his beard he has sacrificed the only +pleasant-looking portion of his face. + +"It could easily be proved that hair and innocence have a subtle +relationship. No very hairy person is really vicious, as witness the +caterpillar, of whom I have not heard that he ever bit any one: while, +on the other hand, the frog, who is born bald, would doubtless be very +savage were it not for the fact that nature has benevolently curtailed +his teeth. Fishes, also, an uncleanly race, and who I fancy are shaved +before birth, are all monsters of cold-blooded ferocity, and they will +devour their parents and even their own offspring with equal and +indiscriminate enjoyment. + +"The habit of shaving is not of a very ancient origin. When humanity +lived a quiet, rural and unambitious life, men did not shave: their +hair was their glory, and if they had occasion to swear, which must +have been infrequent, their hardiest and readiest oath was, 'by the +beard of my father,' showing clearly that this texture was held in +veneration in early times and was probably accorded divine honours upon +suitable occasions. + +"With the advent of war came the habit of shaving. A beard offered too +handy a grip to a foeman who had gotten to close quarters, therefore, +warriors who had no true hardihood of soul preferred cutting off their +beards to the honourable labour of defending their chins. Many ancient +races effected a compromise in order to retain a fitting military +appearance, for a bare-faced warrior has but little of terror in his +aspect. The ancient Egyptians, for example, who had cut off, or could +not cultivate, or had been forcibly deprived of their beards, were wont +to go into battle clad in heavy false whiskers, which, when an enemy +seized hold of them, came off instantly in his hand, and the ancient +Egyptian was enabled to despatch him while in a trance of stupefaction +and horror. Clean-shaved men became, by this cowardly stratagem, very +much prized as fighting men, and thus the foundation of the shaving +habit was laid. + +"It is a remarkable fact that, save for an inconsiderable number who +live in circuses, women have no beards. I am unable at present to +trace the reason for this singular omission, but the advantages of +beards for women are too patent for explanation. They would improve +her personal appearance, and their advantages as air-purifiers or +respirators I need not dwell upon. I am certain that a persistent +application of goose-grease and electricity to the chin of a woman +would at last enable her to become as bearded and virtuous as her +husband, besides entitling her to the political franchise. They are +perverse creatures, however, and it is possible that this deprivation +is responsible for many of their ill-humours and crankinesses. Their +scarcity of beard is the more remarkable when we observe that the +female cat is as magnificently whiskered as her male companion. The +wisdom of cats is proverbial, and I have never heard of a cat who has +hired another cat to bite out, tear off, scrape or otherwise demolish +his or her whiskers. When I do hear of some such occurrence I shall be +prepared to reconsider my position on this subject. + +"In some ways a clean-shaved face is desirable. A pig's cheek should +not have whiskers, neither should oysters nor the face of a clock, but +a man's face should never be seen out of doors without a decent and +honourable covering." + +Having said this, the old gentleman, with remarkable presence of mind, +drank my whisky, and then apologised with dignified and touching +humility. As we departed the youth behind the counter corrugated his +features in a remarkable manner, and said, "bow-wow" by way of +valediction. + + +XII + +He helped himself absently to two water biscuits and a piece of cheese +and sank to a profound reverie. The eating of this light refreshment +was probably a manifestation of subconscious thought, for, when he had +finished, he spoke to me as follows-- + +"There are a great many things which I dislike immensely but the +necessity for which I must perforce acquiesce in: these are water, +easterly winds and actresses: but there are other habits cultivated by +humanity for which I can find no apology, and some of these have grown +to so great an extent that they now bulk as evils of terrific +magnitude." + +"Foremost among these reprehensible customs I will mention that of +eating. Of all the evils under which civilisation staggers helplessly +the most ponderous and merciless is hunger, and it is the evil which +will ultimately decimate all existing forms of life. + +"All forms of organic life have now for millions of years been slaves +to this filthy habit of eating, and have superimposed upon their +original singleness of form a variety of weighty and unattractive +organs to keep pace with the satisfaction of this oppressive appetite, +until to-day the entire organic world stands upon the imminent brink of +destruction if food should be withheld from it for one entire week. + +"Every living being should be self-supporting and self-sufficient. It +should be inherent in the economy of a man to produce for himself not +alone food but also shelter and raiment from his own internal +resources. A man should be able to build a house or evolve a loaf of +bread out of his own body with ease and assurance. + +"Look for a moment at spiders. Every spider carries within himself the +materials for his own home. His stomach, instead of being, as is +vulgarly supposed, a cemetery for smaller organisms, is in reality his +brick-field and rope-walk, and out of this minute sack he will produce +endless miles of cordage and web which he weaves into the most +beautiful and mathematical harmonies. This is a self-contained utility +which might be imitated by men with advantage, and that which is done +with ease by a spider can scarcely offer insuperable difficulty to the +chief of the vertebrates. Of course, each man's production will be +more or less guided and limited by his capacity.--Thus, fat men will +spin forth cathedrals, opera-houses and railway stations. Thin men +will devote themselves to obelisks, church spires, factory chimneys, +and artistic bric-a-brac. Short men will willingly produce artisans' +dwellings, busts of famous men and, perhaps, now and then, pyramids or +villa residences. Constant work of this description will not alone +render us independent of landlords, but, by atrophy of the digestive +organs, will inaugurate a brighter era for long-suffering, food-fed +humanity. + +"Suppose it is advanced that man cannot keep up his strength and +usefulness without some kind of exterior nourishment--I will then +proceed to demonstrate how this can be most easily accomplished. Our +first cousins, the trees and bushes, do not sit down at stated hours to +a heterogeneous mess of steak, tea and onions: they stand firm in the +ground unhurried by the sound of the dinner-bell and careless of the +state of the American market. As the spider is sufficient in itself in +house-building, so are the trees, the grass and all inorganic life +self-supporting so far as food is concerned. The reason is, that +trees, grass and flowers are bedded in the earth, the source of all +nourishment. Let this fact be but properly understood, and the last +and greatest bar to human progress will be removed, and 'the +millenniums which so furiously chase us' will have a chance of catching +us up. + +"If, once a week, men would bury themselves to the chin in good fertile +clay, and allow the nurture of the earth to permeate their bodies there +would be an end to this gross and unfortunate digestive activity. I +have myself experimented in this direction with the most encouraging +results. A rich, loamy soil is very good--it is rather cold at the +bottom, but invigorating. Light, sandy clay would suit sedentary +persons such as parsons, artists, judges. In poor ground some +superphosphates, or a light compost could be strewn by each person +around himself. Families would take turns in pruning each other, and +so forth; but all these incidental matters would rapidly adjust +themselves. After a time we might succeed in propagating ourselves by +seeds or slips, and this would lead to a radical readjustment of our +sex relations and put an end to many of the problems wherewith we are +eternally badgered and perplexed. + +"In some ways I will admit that food is valuable. As a means of +killing a rich uncle by gout, or of attaining wealth by judicious +adulteration it can be recommended, and looked at in the light of a +gentle morning exercise to be taken immediately after rising it is +useful, but as a method of obtaining nourishment it is obsolete and +disgustingly vulgar." + +At this point the gentleman-in-waiting snorted in a most unbecoming +manner, and dived under the counter, from beneath which he alternately +mewed like a cat and crowed like a cock. It was a clear attack of +hysteria. While the poor man was recovering from his seizure the old +gentleman absent-mindedly departed without paying his shot. + + +THE END + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Here are Ladies, by James Stephens + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HERE ARE LADIES *** + +***** This file should be named 20127.txt or 20127.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/1/2/20127/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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