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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.s 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 ma.s.sy 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 s.p.a.ce--
"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 hara.s.sed one, and he sent a special emba.s.sy 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 emba.s.sy, 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?"
"h.e.l.l is turned upside down and inside out," said the fiend. "The tormentors are weeping like little children. The princ.i.p.alities 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 d.a.m.ned 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.