Chapter 4

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."