So Brien of the O"Brien nation strode across the path and sat down by the side of a hedge--
"The first man that pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.ses," said he, and he sat down.
BRIGID
(AFTER THE IRISH)
Do not marry, Breed, asth.o.r.e!
That old man whose head is h.o.a.r 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 pa.s.s me by, And when the sun is in the sky You pa.s.s 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, asth.o.r.e!
That old man; his heart is h.o.a.r 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 pa.s.sions 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. n.o.body 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed--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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.ds. 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 G.o.ds 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 alb.u.m, but a person who has been gifted by Providence or Fairy G.o.dmothers 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 appet.i.tes 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 a.s.s beside him, and if any one asks you who said so, tell them that I did, sir."