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 gods. 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 gods 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 album, but a
person who has been gifted by Providence or Fairy Godmothers 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 appetites 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 ass beside him, and if any one asks you who said so,
tell them that I did, sir."
He sat beside her at dinner and forgot her before the first course was
removed, and, later, when he knocked a glass off the table, he looked
at her as though she were responsible for the debris.
He did not make love to her, a new and remarkable omission in her
experience of men, however bald, and while this was refreshing for a
time it became intolerable shortly. She challenged him, as a woman
can, with the flash of her eyes, the quick music of her laugh, but he
was marvelling at the width of the horizon, rapt in contemplation of
the distant mountains, observing how a flower poised and nodded on its
stalk, following the long, swooping flight of a bird or watching how
the moon tramped down on the stars. So far as she could see he was
unaware that her charms were of other than average significance--
"These poets are awful fools," said she angrily.
But the task of awakening this landlocked nature was one which
presented many interesting features to her. She was really jealous
that he paid her no attention, and, being accustomed to the homage of
every male thing over fifteen years of age, she resented his
negligence, became interested in him, as every one is in the abnormal,
and when a woman becomes interested in a man she is unhappy until he
becomes interested in her.
There had arrived, with the express intention of asking her to marry
him, another young gentleman. He had a light moustache and a fancy
waistcoat, both of which looked new. He was young, rich, handsome, and
sufficiently silly to make any woman wish to take charge of him, and
her father had told him to "go in and win, my boy, there's no one I'd
like better, sir," a very good heartener for a slightly dubious youth,
even though he may consider that the lady of his choice is watching
another man more intently than is pleasant.
The young gentleman gripped, with careful frenzy, at his light, new
moustache, and growled as he watched the stalking. But the poet was
occupied and careless, and then, suddenly, it happened. What movement,
conscious or unconscious, opened his eyes one cannot say: the thing
seemed to be done without any preliminaries, and he was awakened and in
the toils.
They had been reading poetry together, his poetry, and he was
expressing, more to himself than to her, how difficult and how
delightful it was to work with entire satisfaction within the "scanty
plot" of a sonnet. She was listening with bated breath, and answering
with an animation more than slightly tinged with ignorance, for she was
as little interested in the making of sonnets as in the making of
shoes.--Nobody is interested in the making of sonnets, not even poets.
He fell silent after a space and sat gazing at the moon where it globed
out on the stillness, and she also became silent. Her nerves, she told
herself, were out of order. She was more used to dismissing than to
being dismissed and yet she seemed beaten. There was nothing further
that a girl could do. He cared no more about her than he did about
whatever woman cleaned his rooms. She was not angry, but a feeling of
weariness came upon her. (It is odd that one can be so in earnest when
one is in jest.) Once or twice she shook her head at the moon, and as
she stared, moody and quiet, it seemed that the moon had slid beyond
her vision and she was looking into great caverns of space, bursting
with blackness. Some horror of emptiness was reaching to roll her in
pits of murk, where her screams would be battered back on her tongue
soundless.
With an effort she drew her eyes into focus again and turned them,
smiling bitterly, on her companion, and, lo, he was looking at her with
timid eyes, amazed eyes, and they spoke, for all their timidity, louder
than trumpets. She knew that look, who could mistake it? Here was
flame from the authentic fire. He was silent, but his breath came and
went hurriedly, and he was bending towards her, little by little he was
bending, his eyes, his whole body and soul yearning.