Chapter 5

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.