'I mistrust he won't be doing that, the leprechaun. Once you take your
eye away, it's off with him for good and all.'
Margaret O'Brien hugged herself with delight. _That_ was a new one; she
had never got back that far before. Yet how well she remembered it all!
She seemed to smell the woody pungency of the lumber, the limey odor of
white-wash from the field-stone cellar.
The old woman's dream went on. Out of the inexhaustible storehouse of
the past, she summoned, one by one, her much-loved memories. There was a
pig-tailed Margaret in bonnet and shawl, trudging to school one wintry
day. She had seen many wintry school-days, but this one stood out by
reason of the tears she had shed by the way. She saw the long benches,
the slates, the charts, the tall teacher at his desk. With a swelling of
the throat, she saw the little girl sob out her declaration: 'I'm not
for coming no more, Mr. Wilde.'
'What's that, Margaret? And why not? Haven't I been good to you?'
Tears choked the child. 'Oh, Mr. Wilde, it's just because you're so
terrible good to me. They say you are trying to make a Protestant out of
me. So I'll not be coming no more.'
The tall man drew the little girl to his knee and reassured her.
Margaret O'Brien could review that scene with tender delight now. She
had not been forced to give up her beloved school. Mr. Wilde had
explained to her that her brothers were merely teasing her because she
was so quick and such a favorite.
A little Margaret knelt on the cold stone floor at church and stared at
the pictured saints or heard the budding branches rustle in the orchard
outside. Another Margaret, a little taller, begged for a new sheet of
ballads every time her father went to the fair.--There were the long
flimsy sheets, with closely printed verses. These you must adapt to
familiar tunes. This Margaret, then, swept the hearth and stacked the
turf and sang from her bench in the chimney-corner. Sometimes it was
something about 'the little old red coat me father wore,' which was 'All
buttons, buttons, buttons, buttons; all buttons down before'; or another
beginning,--
'O, dear, what can the matter be?
Johnnie's so long at the fair!
He promised to buy me a knot of blue ribbon
To tie up my bonny brown hair.'
Then there was a picture of the time the fairies actually bewitched the
churn, and, labor as you might, no butter would form, not the least tiny
speck. Margaret and her mother took the churn apart and examined every
part of it. Nothing out of the way. ''Tis the fairies is in it,' her
mother said. 'All Souls' Day a-Friday. Put out a saucer of cream the
night for the little people, let you.' A well-grown girl in a blue
cotton frock, the long braids of her black hair whipping about her in
the windy evening, set out the cream on the stone flags before the low
doorway, wasting no time in getting in again. The next day, how the
butter 'came'! Hardly started they were, when they could feel it
forming. When Margaret washed the dasher, she 'kept an eye out' for the
dark corners of the room, for the air seemed thronged and murmurous.
After this picture, came always the same tall girl still in the same
blue frock, this time with a shawl on her head. She brought in potatoes
from the sheltered heaps that wintered out in the open. From one pailful
she picked out a little flat stone, rectangular and smoother and more
evenly proportioned than any stone she had ever seen.
'What a funny stone!' she said to her mother.
Her mother left carding her wool to look. 'You may well say so. 'Tis one
of the fairies' tables. Look close and you'll be turning up their little
chairs as well.'
It was as her mother said. Margaret found four smaller stones of like
appearance, which one might well imagine to be stools for tiny dolls.
'Shall I be giving them to little Bee for playthings?'
'You will not. You'll be putting them outside. In the morning, though
you may be searching the countryside, no trace of them will you find,
for the fairies will be taking them again.'
So Margaret stacked the fairy table and chairs outside. Next morning,
she ran out half reluctantly, for she was afraid she would find them and
that would spoil the story. But, no! they were gone. She never saw them
again, though she searched in all imaginable places. Nor was that the
last potato heap to yield these mysterious stones.
Margaret, growing from scene to scene, appeared again in a group of
laughing boys and girls.
'What'll we play now?'
'Let's write the ivy test.'
'Here's leaves.'
Each wrote a name on a leaf and dropped it into a jar of water. Next
morning, Margaret, who had misgivings, stole down early and searched for
her leaf. Yes, the die was cast! At the sight of its bruised surface,
ready tears flooded her eyes. She had written the name of her little
grandmother, and the condition of the leaf foretold death within the
year. The other leaves were unmarred. She quickly destroyed the
ill-omened bit of ivy and said nothing about it, though the children
clamored. 'There's one leaf short. Whose is gone?' 'Mine is there!' 'Is
it yours, John?' 'Is it yours, Esther?' But Margaret kept her counsel,
and, within the year, the little grandmother was dead. Of course, she
was old, though vigorous; yet Margaret would never play that game again.
It was like gambling with fate.
And still the girls kept swinging past. Steadily, all too swiftly,
Margaret shot up to a woman's stature; her skirts crept down, her braids
ought to have been bobbed up behind. She let them hang, however, and
still ran with the boys, questing the bogs, climbing the apple trees,
storming the wind-swept hills. Her mother would point to her sister
Mary, who, though younger, sat now by the fire with her 'spriggin''
[embroidery] for 'the quality.' Mary could crochet, too, and had a fine
range of 'shamrogue' patterns. So the mother would chide Margaret.
'What kind of a girl are you, at all, to be ever lepping and tearing
like a redshanks [deer]? 'Tis high time for you to be getting sensible
and learning something. Whistles and scouting-guns is all you're good
for, and there's no silver in them things as far as I can see.'
What fine whistles she contrived out of the pithy willow shoots in the
spring! And the scouting-guns hollowed out of elder-stalks, which they
charged with water from the brook by means of wadded sticks, working
piston-wise! They would hide behind a hedge and bespatter enemies and
friends alike. Many's the time they got their ears warmed in consequence
or went supperless to bed, pretending not to see the table spread with
baked potatoes,--'laughing potatoes,' they called them, because they
were ever splitting their sides,--besides delicious buttermilk,
freshly-laid eggs, oat-cakes and fresh butter. 'A child without supper
is two to breakfast,' their mother would say, smiling, when she saw them
'tackle' their stirabout the next day.
How full of verve and life were all these figures! That glancing
creature grow old? How could such things be! The sober pace of maturity
even seemed out of her star. Yet here she was, growing up, for all her
reluctance. An awkward gossoon leaned over the gate in the moonlight,
though she was indoors, ready to hide. But nobody noticed her alarm.
'There's that long-legged McMurray lad again; scouting after Mary, I'll
be bound,' said her mother, all unawares.
But it was not Mary that he came for, though she married him just the
same, and came out to America with their children some years after her
sister's lone pilgrimage.
The intrusion of Jerry McMurray signaled the grounding of her dream-bark
on the shoals of reality. Who cared about the cut-and-dried life of a
grown woman? Enchantment now lay behind her, and, if the intervals
between periods of pain permitted, she again turned an expectant face
toward the old childish visions. Sometimes she could make the trip twice
over without being overtaken by suffering. But her intervals of comfort
grew steadily shorter; frequently she was interrupted before she could
get rightly launched on her delight. And always there seemed to be one
vision more illusive than the rest which she particularly longed to
recapture. At last, chance words of Anna's put her on its trail in this
wise.
When she was not, as her niece said, 'in her trance, wool-gathering'
Anna did her best to distract her, sending the children in to ask 'would
she have a sup of tea now,' or a taste of wine jelly. One day, after the
invalid had spent a bad night, she brought in her new long silk coat for
her aunt's inspection, for the old woman had always been 'tasty' and
'dressy,' and had made many a fine gown in her day. The sharp old eyes
lingered on the rich and truly striking braid ornament that secured the
loose front of the garment.
'What's that plaster?' she demanded, disparagingly.
Anna, inclined to be wroth, retorted: 'I suppose you'd be preferring one
o' them tight ganzy [sweater] things that fit the figger like a jersey,
all buttoned down before.'
A sudden light flamed in the old face. 'I have it!' she cried. 'Tis what
I've been seeking this good while. 'Twill come now--the red coat! I must
be getting back to the beginning.'
With that, she was off, relaxing and composing herself, as if
surrendering to the spell of a hypnotist.
To reach any desired picture in her gallery, she must start at the
outset. Then they followed on, in due order--all that procession of
little girls: pink clad, blue-print clad, bare-legged or brogan-shod;
flirting their short skirts, plaiting their heavy braids. About half way
along, a new figure asserted itself--a girl of nine or ten, who twisted
this way and that before a blurred bit of mirror and frowned at the red
coat that flapped about her heels,--bought oversize, you may be sure, so
that she shouldn't grow out of it too soon. The sleeves swallowed her
little brown hands, the shoulders and back were grotesquely sack-like,
the front had a puss [pout] on it.
''Tis the very fetch of Paddy the gander I am in it. I'll not be wearing
it so.' She frowned with sudden intentness. 'Could I be fitting it a
bit, I wonder, the way mother does cut down John's coats for Martin?'
With needle, scissors and thread, she crept up to her little chamber
under the eaves. It was early in the forenoon when she set to work
ripping. The morning passed, and the dinner hour.
'Peggy! Where's the girl gone to, I wonder?'
'To Aunt Theresa's, I'm thinking.'
'Well, it's glad I am she's out o' my sight, for my hands itched to be
shaking her. Stand and twist herself inside out she did, fussing over
the fit of the good coat I'm after buying her. The little fustherer!'
For the small tailoress under the roof, the afternoon sped on winged
feet: pinning, basting, and stitching; trying on, ripping out again, and
re-fitting. 'I'll be taking it in a wee bit more.' She had to crowd up
to the window to catch the last of the daylight. At dusk, she swept her
dark hair from her flushed cheeks and forced her sturdy body into the
red coat. It was a 'fit,' believe you me! Modeled on the lines of the
riding-habit of a full-figured lady she had seen hunting about the
country-side, it buttoned up tight over her flat, boyish chest and
bottled up her squarish little waist. About her narrow hips, it rippled
out in a short 'frisk.' Beneath, her calico skirt, and
bramble-scratched brown legs.
Warmed with triumph, she flew downstairs. Her mother and a neighbor were
sitting in the glow of the peat fire. She tried to meet them with
assurance, but at sight of their amazed faces, misgiving clutched her.
She pivoted before the mirror.
'Holy hour!' cried her mother. 'What sausage-skin is that you've got
into?' Then, as comprehension grew: 'Glory b' t' God, Ellen! 'tis the
remains of the fine new coat, I'm after buying her, large enough to last
her the next five years!'
''Twas too large!' the child whimpered. 'A gander I looked in it!' Then,
cajolingly, 'I'm but after taking it in a bit, ma. 'Twill do grand now,
and maybe I'll not be getting much fatter. Look at the fit of it, just!'
'Fit! God save the mark!' cried her mother.
'Is the child after making that jacket herself?' asked the neighbor.
'I am,' Margaret spoke up, defiantly. 'I cut it and shaped it and put it
together. It has even a frisk to the tail.'
'Maggie,' said the neighbor to Margaret's mother. ''Tis as good a piece
o' work for a child of her years as ever I see. You ought not to be
faulting her, she's done that well. And,' bursting into irrepressible
laughter, 'it's herself will have to be wearing it, woman dear! All she
needs now is a horse and a side-saddle to be an equeestrieen!'
So the wanton destruction of the good red coat--in that house where good
coats were sadly infrequent--ended with a laugh after all. How long she
wore that tight jacket, and how grand she felt in it, let the other
children laugh as they would!
What joy the old woman took in this incident! With its fullness of
detail, it achieved a delicious suggestion of permanence, in contrast to
the illusiveness of other isolated moments. Margaret O'Brien _saw_ all
these other figures, but she really _was_ the child with the red coat.
In the long years between, she had fashioned many fine dresses--gowned
gay girls for their conquests and robed fair brides for the altar. Of
all these, nothing now remained; but she could feel the good stuff of
the red kersey under her little needle-scratched fingers, and see the
glow of its rich color against her wind-kissed brown cheek.
'To the life!' she exclaimed aloud, exultantly. 'To the very life!'
'What life, Aunt Margaret?' asked Anna, with gentle solicitude. 'Is it
afraid of the end you are, darling?'
'No, no, asthore. I've resigned myself long since, though 'twas bitter
knowledge at the outset. Well, well, God is good and we can't live
forever.'
Her eyes, opening to the two flaring patent gas-burners, winked as if
she had dwelt long in a milder light. 'What's all this glare about?' she
asked, playfully. 'I guess the chandler's wife is dead. Snuff out the
whole of them staring candles, let you. 'Tis daylight yet; just the time
o' day I always did like the best.'
Anna obeyed and sat down beside the bed in the soft spring dusk. A
little wind crept in under the floating white curtains, bringing with it
the sweetness of new grass and pear-blossoms from the trim yard. It
seemed an interval set apart from the hurrying hours of the busy day for
rest and thought and confidences--an open moment. The old woman must
have felt its invitation, for she turned her head and held out a shy
hand to her niece.
'Anna, my girl, you imagine 'tis the full o' the moon with me, I'm
thinking. But, no, never woman was more in her right mind than I. Do you
want I should be telling you what I've been hatching these many long
days and nights? 'Twill be a good laugh for you, I'll go bail.'
And, as best she could, she gave the trend of her imaginings.
Anna did not laugh, however. Instead--with the ever-ready sympathy and
comprehension of the Celt--she showed brimming eyes. ''Tis a thought
I've often myself, let me tell you,' she admitted. 'Of all the little
girls that were me, and now can be living no longer.'
'You've said it!' cried the old woman, delighted at her unexpected
responsiveness. 'Only with me, 'tis fair pit'yus. There's all those poor
dear lasses there's nobody but me left to remember, and soon there'll
not be even that. Sometimes they seem to be pleading just not to be
forgotten, so I have to be keeping them alive in my head. I'm
succeeding, too, and, if you'll believe me, 'tis them little whips seem
to be the real ones, and the live children here the shadders.' Her voice
choked with sudden tears. 'They're all the children ever I had. My
grief! that I'll have to be leaving them! They'll die now, for no man
lives who can remember them any more.'
Anna's beauty, already fading with the cares of house and children,
seemed to put on all its former fresh charm. She leaned forward with
girlish eagerness. 'Auntie Margaret,' she breathed, with new tenderness,
'there's many a day left you yet. I'll be sitting here aside of you
every evening at twilight just, and you can be showing me the lasses you
have in mind. Many's the time my mother told me of the old place, and I
can remember it well enough myself, though I was the youngest of the
lot. So you can be filling it with all of our people--Mary and Margaret,
John, Martin and Esther, Uncle Sheamus and the rest. I'll see them just
as clear as yourself, for I've a place in my head where pictures come as
thick and sharp as stars on a frosty night, when I get thinking. Then,
with me ever calling them up, they'll be dancing and stravaging about
till doomsday.'
So the old woman had her heart's desire. She re-created her earlier
selves and passed them on, happy in the thought that she was saving them
from oblivion. 'Do you mind that bold lass clouting her pet bull, now?'
she would ask, with delight, speaking more and more as if of a third
person. 'And that other hussy that's after making a ganzy out of her
good coat? I'd admire to have the leathering of that one.'
Still the old woman lingered, a good month beyond her allotted time. As
spring ripened, the days grew long. In the slow-fading twilights, the
two women set their stage, gave cues for entrances and exits. Over the
white counterpane danced the joyous figures, so radiant, so incredibly
young, the whole cycle of a woman's girlhood. Grown familiar now, they
came of their own accord, soothing her hours of pain with their laughing
beauty, or, suddenly contemplative, assisting with seemly decorum at her
devotional ecstasies.
'A saintly woman,' the young priest told Anna on one of the last days.
'She will make a holy end. Her meditations must be beautiful, for she
has the true light of Heaven on her face. She looks as if she heard
already the choiring of the angels.'
And Anna, respectfully agreeing, kept her counsel. He was a good and
sympathetic man and a priest of God, but, American-born, he was, like
her stolid, kindly husband, outside the magic circle of comprehension.
'He sees nothing, poor man,' she thought, indulgently. 'But he does mean
well.' So she set her husband to 'mind' the young ones, and, easily
doffing the sordid preoccupations of every day, slipped back into the
enchanted ring.