by a recital of how she managed her own husband, and of the ridiculous
ease whereby any man may be governed; for she had observed that men
were very susceptible to control if only the control was not too
apparent. If a man did a thing twice the doing of that thing became a
habit and a passion, any interference with which provoked him to an
unreasoning bull-like wrath wherein both wives and crockery were
equally shattered; and, therefore, a woman had only to observe the
personal habits of her beloved and fashion her restrictions according
to that standard. This meant that men made the laws and women
administered them--a wise allocation of prerogatives, for she
conceived that the executive female function was every whit as
important as the creative faculty which brought these laws into being.
She was quite prepared to leave the creative powers in male hands if
they would equally abstain from interference with the subsequent
working details, for she was of opinion that in the pursuit of comfort
(not entirely to their credit was it said) men were far more anxiously
concerned than were women, and they flew to their bourne with an
instinct for short cuts wherewith women were totally unacquainted.
But in the young man who had come to lodge with her Mrs. Cafferty
discerned a being in whom virtue had concentrated to a degree that
almost amounted to a congestion. He had instantly played with the
children on their being presented to him: this was the sign of a good
nature. Before he was acquainted with her ten minutes he had made
four jokes: this was the sign of a pleasant nature; and he sang loudly
and unceasingly when he awoke in the morning, which was the unfailing
index to a happy nature. Moreover, he ate the meals provided for him
without any of that particular, tedious examination which is so
insulting, and had complimented Mrs. Cafferty on an ability to put a
taste on food which she was pleased to obtain recognition of.
Both Mary and her mother remarked on these details with an admiration
which was as much as either politeness or friendship could expect.
Mrs. Makebelieve's solitary method of life had removed her so
distantly from youth that information about a young man was almost
tonic to her. She had never wished for a second husband, but had often
fancied that a son would have been a wonderful joy to her. She
considered that a house which had no young man growing up in it was
not a house at all, and she believed that a boy would love his
mother, if not more than a daughter could, at least with a difference
which would be strangely sweet--a rash, impulsive, unquiet love: a
love which would continually prove her love to the breaking point; a
love that demanded, and demanded with careless assurance, that
accepted her goodness as unquestioningly as she accepted the fertility
of the earth, and used her knowing blindly and flatteringly how
inexhaustively rich her depths were.... She could have wept for this:
it was priceless beyond kingdoms: the smile on a boy's face lifted her
to an exaltation. Her girl was inexpressibly sweet, surely an island
in her wide heart, but a little boy ... her breasts could have filled
with milk for him, him she could have nourished in the rocks and in
desert places: he would have been life to her and adventure, a barrier
against old age, an incantation against sorrow, a fragrance and a
grief and a defiance....
It was quite plain that Mrs. Cafferty was satisfied with this addition
to her household, but the profit which she had expected to accrue from
his presence was not the liberal one she had in mind when making the
preliminary arrangements. For it appeared that the young man had an
appetite of which Mrs. Cafferty spoke with the respect proper to
something colossal and awesome. A half-loaf did not more than break
the back of a hunger which could wriggle disastrously over another
half-loaf: so that, instead of being relieved by his advent, she was
confronted by a more immediate and desolating bankruptcy than that
from which she had attempted to escape. Exactly how to deal with this
situation she did not know, and it was really in order to discuss her
peculiar case that she had visited Mrs. Makebelieve. She could, of
course, have approached the young man and demanded from him an
increase of money that would still be equitable to both parties, but
she confessed a repugnance to this course. She did not like to
upbraid or trouble any one on account of an appetite which was so
noteworthy. She disliked, in any event, to raise a question about
food: her instinct for hospitality was outraged at the thought, and as
she was herself the victim, or the owner, of an appetite which had
often placed a strain on her revenues, a fellow-feeling operated still
further in mitigation of his disqualification.
Mrs. Makebelieve's advice was that she should stifle the first fierce
and indiscriminate cravings of the young man's hunger by a liberal
allowance of stirabout, which was a cheap, wholesome and very
satisfying food, and in that way his destruction of more costly
victuals would be kept within reasonable limits. Appetite, she held,
was largely a matter of youth, and as a boy who was scarcely done
growing had no way of modifying his passion for nourishment, it would
be a lapse from decency to insult him on so legitimate a failing.
Mrs. Cafferty thought that this might be done, and thanked her friend
for the counsel; but Mary, listening to these political matters,
conceived Mrs. Cafferty as a person who had no longer any claim to
honor, and she pitied the young man whose appetite was thus publicly
canvassed, and who might at any moment be turned out of house and home
on account of a hunger against which he had no safeguard and no remedy.
XXVII
It was not long until Mary and Mrs. Cafferty's lodger met. As he came
in by the hall door one day Mary was carrying upstairs a large water
bucket, the portage of which two or three times a day is so heavy a
strain on the dweller in tenements. The youth instantly seized the
bucket and, despite her protestations and appeals, he carried it
upstairs. He walked a few steps in advance of Mary, whistling
cheerfully as he went, so she was able to get a good view of him. He
was so thin that he nearly made her laugh, but he carried the bucket,
the weight of which she had often bowed under, with an ease
astonishing in so slight a man, and there was a spring in his walk
which was pleasant to see. He laid the bucket down outside her room,
and requested her urgently to knock at his door whenever she required
more water fetched, because he would be only too delighted to do it
for her, and it was not the slightest trouble in the world. While he
spoke he was stealing glances at her face and Mary was stealing
glances at his face, and when they caught one another doing this at
the same moment they both looked hurriedly away, and the young man
departed to his own place.
But Mary was very angry with this young man. She had gone downstairs
in her house attire, which was not resplendent, and she objected to
being discovered by any youth in raiment not suitable to such an
occasion. She could not visualize herself speaking to a man unless she
was adorned as for a festivity. The gentlemen and ladies of whom her
mother sometimes spoke, and of whom she had often dreamt, were never
mean in their habiliments. The gentlemen frequently had green silken
jackets with a foam of lace at the wrists and a cascade of the same
rich material brawling upon their breasts, and the ladies were
attired in a magnificent scarcity of clothing, the fundamental
principle whereof, although she was quite assured of its
righteousness, she did not yet understand.
Indeed, at this period Mary's interest in dress far transcended any
interest she had ever known before. She knew intimately the window
contents of every costumier's shop in Grafton and Wicklow and Dawson
streets, and could follow with intelligent amazement the apparently
trifling, but exceedingly important, differences of line or seam or
flounce which ranked one garment as a creation and its neighbor as a
dress. She and her mother often discussed the gowns wherein the
native dignity of their souls might be adequately caparisoned. Mrs.
Makebelieve, with a humility which had still a trace of anger,
admitted that the period when she could have been expressed in color
had expired, and she decided that a black silk dress, with a heavy
gold chain falling along the bosom, was as much as her soul was now
entitled to. She had an impatience, amounting to contempt, for those
florid flamboyant souls whose outer physical integument so grievously
misrepresented them. She thought that after a certain time one should
dress the body and not the soul, and, discovering an inseparability
between the two, she held that the mean shrine must hold a very
trifling deity and that an ill-made or time-worn body should never
dress gloriously under pain of an accusation of hypocrisy or
foolishness.
But for Mary she planned garments with a freedom and bravery which
astonished while it delighted her daughter. She combined twenty styles
into one style of terrifying originality. She conceived dresses of a
complexity beyond the labor of any but a divinely inspired needle, and
others again whose simplicity was almost too tenuous for human speech.
She discussed robes whose trailing and voluminous richness could with
difficulty be supported by ten strong attendants, and she had heard of
a dress the fabric whereof was of such gossamer and ethereal
insubstancy that it might be packed into a walnut more conveniently
than an ordinary dress could be impressed into a portmanteau. Mary's
exclamations of delight and longing ranged from every possible dress
to every impossible one, and then Mrs. Makebelieve reviewed all the
dresses she had worn from the age of three years to the present day,
including wedding and mourning dresses, those which were worn at
picnics and dances and for traveling, with an occasional divergence
which comprehended the clothing of her friends and her enemies during
the like period. She explained the basic principles of dress to her
daughter, showing that in this art, as in all else, order cannot be
dispensed with. There were things a tall person might wear, but which
a short person might not, and the draperies which adorned a portly
lady were but pitiable weeds when trailed by her attenuated sister.
The effect of long thin lines in a fabric will make a short woman
appear tall, while round, thick lines can reduce the altitude of
people whose height is a trouble to be combated. She illustrated the
usage of large and small checks and plaids and all the mazy
interweaving of other cloths, and she elucidated the mystery of color,
tone, half-tone, light and shade so interestingly that Mary could
scarcely hear enough of her lore. She was acquainted with the colors
which a dark person may wear and those which are suitable to a fair
person, and the shades proper to be used by the wide class ranging
between these extremes she knew also, with a special provision for
red-haired and sandy folk and those who have no complexion at all.
Certain laws which she formulated were cherished by her daughter as
oracular utterances--that one should match one's eyes in the house
and one's hair in the street, was one; that one's hat and gloves and
shoes were of vastly more importance than all the rest of one's
clothing, was another; that one's hair and stockings should tone as
nearly as possible, was a third. Following these rules, she assured
her daughter, a woman could never be other than well dressed, and all
of these things Mary learned by heart and asked her mother to tell her
more, which her mother was quite able and willing to do.
XXVIII
When the sexual instinct is aroused men and dogs and frogs and
beetles, and such other creatures as are inside or outside of this
catalogue, are very tenacious in the pursuit of their ambition. We can
seldom get away from that which attracts or repels us. Love and hate
are equally magnetic and compelling, and each, being supernormal,
drags us willingly or woefully in their wake, until at last our blind
persistency is either routed or appeased and we advance our lauds or
gnash our teeth as the occasion bids us. There is no tragedy more
woeful than the victory of hate, nor any attainment so hopelessly
barren as the sterility of that achievement; for hate is finality, and
finality is the greatest evil which can happen in a world of movement.
Love is an inaugurator displaying his banners on captured peaks and
pressing forever to a new and more gracious enterprise, but the
victories of hate are gained in a ditch from which there is no horizon
visible and whence there does not go even one limping courier.
After Mary fled from the embrace of the great policeman he came to
think more closely of her than he had been used; but her image was
throned now in anger: she came to him like a dull brightness wherefrom
desolate thunder might roll at an instant. Indeed, she began to obsess
him so that not even the ministrations of his aunt nor the obeisances
of that pleasant girl, the name of whose boots was Fairybell, could
give him any comfort or wean him from a contemplation which sprawled
gloomily between him and his duties to the traffic. If he had not
discovered the lowliness of her quality his course might have been
simple and straightforward: the issue, in such an event, would have
narrowed to every man's poser--whether he should marry this girl or
that girl? but the arithmetic whereby such matters are elucidated
would at the last have eased his perplexity, and the path indicated
could have been followed with the fullest freedom on his part and
without any disaster to his self-love. If, whichever way his
inclination wavered, there was any pang of regret (and there was bound
to be) such a feeling would be ultimately waived by his reason or
retained as a memorial which had a gratifying savor. But the knowledge
of Mary's social inferiority complicated matters, for, although this
automatically put her out of the question as his wife, her subsequent
ill-treatment of himself had injected a virus to his blood which was
one-half a passion for her body and one-half a frenzy for vengeance.
He could have let her go easily enough if she had not first let him
go; for he read dismissal in her action and resented it as a trespass
on his own just prerogative.--He had but to stretch out his hand and
she would have dropped to it as tamely as a kitten, whereas now she
eluded his hand, would, indeed, have nothing to do with it; and this
could not be forgiven. He would gladly have beaten her into
submission, for what right has a slip of a girl to withstand the
advances of a man and a policeman? That is a crooked spirit demanding
to be straightened with a truncheon: but as we cannot decently, or
even peaceably, beat a girl until she is married to us he had to
relinquish that dear idea. He would have dismissed her from his mind
with the contempt she deserved, but, alas! he could not: she clung
there like a burr not to be dislodged saving by possession or a
beating--two shuddering alternatives--for she had become detestably
dear to him. His senses and his self-esteem conspired to heave her to
a pedestal where his eye strained upwards in bewilderment--that she
who was below him could be above him! This was astounding: she must be
pulled from her eminence and stamped back to her native depths by his
own indignant hoofs; thence she might be gloriously lifted again with
a calm, benignant, masculine hand shedding pardons and favors, and
perhaps a mollifying unguent for her bruises. Bruises! a knee, an
elbow--they were nothing; little damages which to kiss was to make
well again. Will not women cherish a bruise that it may be medicined
by male kisses? Nature and precedent have both sworn to it.... But she
was out of reach; his hand, high-flung as it might be, could not get
to her. He went furiously to the Phoenix Park, to St. Stephen's
Green, to outlying leafy spots and sheltered lanes, but she was in
none of these places. He even prowled about the neighborhood of her
home and could not meet her. Once he had seen Mary as she came along
the road, and he drew back into a doorway. A young man was marching by
her side, a young man who gabbled without ceasing and to whom Mary
chattered again with an equal volubility. As they passed by Mary
caught sight of him, and her face went flaming. She caught her
companion's arm, and they hurried down the road at a great pace....
She had never chattered to him. Always he had done the talking, and
she had been an obedient grateful listener. Nor did he quarrel with
her silence, but her reserve shocked him--it was a pretense, worse, a
lie, a masked and hooded falsehood. She had surrendered to him
willingly, and yet drew about her a protective armor of reserve
wherein she skulked immune to the arms which were lawfully victorious.
Is there, then, no loot for a conqueror? We demand the keys of the
City Walls and unrestricted entry, or our torches shall blaze again.
This chattering Mary was a girl whom he had never caught sight of at
all. She had been hiding from him even in his presence. In every
aspect she was an anger. But she could talk to the fellow with her
... a skinny whipper-snapper, whom the breath of a man could shred
into remote, eyeless vacuity. Was this man another insult? Did she not
even wait to bury her dead? Pah! she was not value for his thought. A
girl so lightly facile might be blown from here to there and she would
scarcely notice the difference. Here and there were the same places to
her, and him and him were the same person. A girl of that type comes
to a bad end: he had seen it often, the type and the end, and never
separate. Can one not prophesy from facts? He saw a slut in a slum, a
drab hovering by a dark entry, and the vision cheered him mightily for
one glowing minute and left him unoccupied for the next, into which
she thronged with the flutter of wings and the sound of a great
mocking.
His aunt tracked his brows back to the responsible duties of his
employment and commiserated with him, and made a lamentation about
matters with which he never had been occupied, so that the last tag
of his good manners departed from him, and he damned her unswervingly
into consternation. That other pleasant girl, whose sweetness he had
not so much tasted as sampled, had taken to brooding in his presence:
she sometimes drooped an eye upon him like a question.... Let her look
out or maybe he'd blaze into her teeth: howl menace down her throat
until she swooned. Some one should yield to him a visible and tangible
agony to balance his. Does law probe no deeper than the pillage of a
watch? Can one filch our self-respect and escape free? Shall not our
souls also sue for damages against its aggressor? Some person rich
enough must pay for his lacerations or there was less justice in
heaven than in the Police Courts; and it might be that girl's lot to
expiate the sins of Mary. It would be a pleasure, if a sour one, to
make somebody wriggle as he had, and somebody should wriggle; of that
he was blackly determined.
XXIX
Indeed, Mrs. Cafferty's lodger and Mary had become quite intimate, and
it was not through the machinations of either that this had happened.
Ever since Mrs. Makebelieve had heard of that young man's appetite and
the miseries through which he had to follow it she had been deeply
concerned on his behalf. She declined to believe that the boy ever got
sufficient to eat, and she enlarged to her daughter on the seriousness
of this privation to a young man. Disabilities, such as a young girl
could not comprehend, followed in the train of insufficient
nourishment. Mrs. Cafferty was her friend, and was, moreover, a good
decent woman against whom the tongue of rumor might wag in vain; but
Mrs. Cafferty was the mother of six children and her natural
kindliness dared not expand to their detriment. Furthermore, the fact
of her husband being out of work tended to still further circumscribe
the limits of her generosity. She divined a lean pot in the Cafferty
household, and she saw the young man getting only as much food as Mrs.
Cafferty dared to give him, so that the pangs of his hunger almost
gnawed at her own vitals. Under these circumstances she had sought for
an opportunity to become better acquainted with him, and had very
easily succeeded; so when Mary found him seated on their bed and
eating violently of their half-loaf if she was astonished at first she
was also very glad. Her mother watched the demolition of their food
with a calm happiness, for, although the amount she could contribute
was small, every little helped, and not alone were his wants assisted,
but her friend, Mrs. Cafferty, and her children were also aided by
this dulling of an appetite which might have endangered their
household peace.
The young man repaid their hospitality by an easy generosity of speech
covering affairs which neither Mrs. Makebelieve nor her daughter had
many opportunities for studying. He spoke of those very interesting
matters with which a young man is concerned, and his speculations on
various subjects, while often quite ignorant, were sufficiently vivid
to be interesting and were wrong in a boyish fashion which was not
unpleasant. He was very argumentative, but was still open to reason;
therefore, Mrs. Makebelieve had opportunities for discussion which
were seldom granted to her. Insensibly she adopted the position of
guide, philosopher and friend to him, and Mary also found new
interests in speech, for, although the young man thought very
differently from her, he did think upon her own plane, and the things
which secretly engrossed him were also the things wherewith she was
deeply preoccupied. A community of ignorances may be as binding as a
community of interests. We have a dull suspicion of that him or her
who knows more than we do, but the person who is prepared to go out
adventuring with us with surmise only for a chart and enjoyment for a
guide may use our hand as his own and our pockets as his treasury.