Transcriber's Notes:
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by
=equal signs=.
Small uppercase have been replaced with regular uppercase.
Blank pages have been eliminated.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the
original.
CLORINDA
WALKS
IN HEAVEN
TALES BY A. E. COPPARD
[Illustration]
THE GOLDEN COCKEREL PRESS
WALTHAM SAINT LAWRENCE
BERKSHIRE ... MCMXXII
_I record my acknowledgments to the Editors of the following journals
in which some of these tales first appeared_: The Cornhill, London
Mercury, Westminster Gazette, Manchester Guardian, English Review;
_and_ The Dial, _of America._
A.E.C.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE HURLY-BURLY 9
CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN 21
THE CHERRY TREE 29
THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 37
FELIX TINCLER 49
CRAVEN ARMS 61
A BROADSHEET BALLAD 93
COTTON 103
POMONA'S BABE 115
TO MRS. FLYNN
THE HURLY-BURLY
THE HURLY BURLY
The Weetmans--mother, son, and daughter--lived on a thriving farm. It
was small enough, God knows; but it had always been a turbulent place
of abode. For the servant it was "Phemy, do this," or "Phemy, have you
done that?" from dawn to dark, and even from dark to dawn there was
a hovering of unrest. The widow Weetman, a partial invalid, was the
only figure that manifested any semblance of tranquility; and it was a
misleading one, for she sat day after day on her large hams, knitting
and nodding, and lifting her grey face only to grumble, her spectacled
eyes transfixing the culprit with a basilisk glare. And her daughter
Alice, the housekeeper, who had a large face, a dominating face, in
some respects she was all face, was like a blast in a corridor with her
"Maize for the hens, Phemy!--More firewood, Phemy!--Who has set the
trap in the harness room?--Come along!--Have you scoured the skimming
pans?--Why not?--Where are you idling?--Come along, Phemy, I have no
time to waste this morning; you really must help me!" It was not only
in the house that this cataract of industry flowed; outside there was
activity enough for a regiment. A master-farmer's work consists largely
of a series of conversations with other master-farmers, a long-winded
way of doing long-headed things; but Glastonbury Weetman, the son, was
not like that at all; he was the incarnation of energy, always doing
and doing, chock-full of orders, adjurations, objurgatives, blame,
and blasphemy. That was the kind of place Phemy Madigan worked at.
No one could rest on laurels there. The farm and the home possessed
everybody, lock, stock, and barrel; work was like a tiger, it ate you
up implacably. The Weetmans did not mind--they liked being eaten by
such a tiger.
After six or seven years of this Alice went back to marry an old
sweetheart in Canada, where the Weetmans had originally come from;
but Phemy's burden was in no way lessened thereby. There were as many
things to wash and sew and darn; there was always a cart of churns
about to dash for a train it could not possibly catch, or a horse to
shoe that could not possibly be spared. Weetman hated to see his people
merely walking. "Run over to the barn for that hayfork!" or "Slip
across to the ricks, quick, now!" he would cry; and if ever an unwary
hen hampered his path it only did so once--and no more. His labourers
were mere things of flesh and blood, but they occasionally resented his
ceaseless flagellations. Glas Weetman did not like to be impeded or
controverted; one day in a rage he had smashed that lumbering loon of a
carter called Gathercole. For this he was sent to gaol for a month.
The day after he had been sentenced Phemy Madigan, alone in the house
with Mrs. Weetman, had waked at the usual early hour. It was a foggy
September morning; Sampson and his boy Daniel were clattering pails in
the dairy shed. The girl felt sick and gloomy as she dressed; it was
a wretched house to work in, crickets in the kitchen, cockroaches in
the garret, spiders and mice everywhere. It was an old long low house;
she knew that when she descended the stairs the walls would be stained
with autumnal dampness, the banisters and rails oozing with moisture.
She wished she was a lady and married, and living in a palace fifteen
stories high.
It was fortunate that she was big and strong, though she had only been
a charity girl taken from the workhouse by the Weetmans when she was
fourteen years old. That was seven years ago. It was fortunate that she
was fed well at the farm, very well indeed; it was the one virtue of
the place. But her meals did not counterbalance things; that farm ate
up the body and blood of people. And at times the pressure was charged
with a special excitation, as if a taut elastic thong had been plucked
and released with a reverberating ping.
It was so on this morning. Mrs. Weetman was dead in her bed.
At that crisis a new sense descended upon the girl, a sense of
responsibility. She was not in fear, she felt no grief or surprise. It
concerned her in some way, but she herself was unconcerned, and she
slid without effort into the position of mistress of the farm. She
opened a window and looked out of doors. A little way off a boy with a
red scarf stood by an open gate.
"Oi--oi, kup, kup, kup!" he cried to the cows in that field. Some of
the cows, having got up, stared amiably at him, others sat on ignoring
his hail, while one or two plodded deliberately towards him. "Oi--oi,
kup, kup, kup!"
"Lazy rascal, that boy," remarked Phemy; "we shall have to get rid of
him. Dan'l! Come here, Dan'l!" she screamed, waving her arm wildly.
"Quick!"
She sent him away for police and doctor. At the inquest there were no
relatives in England who could be called upon, no other witnesses than
Phemy. After the funeral she wrote a letter to Glastonbury Weetman in
gaol, informing him of his bereavement, but to this he made no reply.
Meanwhile the work of the farm was pressed forward under her control;
for though she was revelling in her personal release from the torment
she would not permit others to share her intermission. She had got Mrs.
Weetman's keys and her box of money. She paid the two men and the boy
their wages week by week. The last of the barley was reaped, the oats
stacked, the roots hoed, the churns sent daily under her supervision.
And always she was bustling the men.
"O dear me, these lazy rogues!" she would complain to the empty rooms.
"They waste time, so it's robbery--it _is_ robbery. You may wear
yourself to the bone, and what does it signify to such as them? All the
responsibility too! They would take your skin if they could get it off
you--and they can't!"
She kept such a sharp eye on the corn and meal and eggs that Sampson
grew surly. She placated him by handing him Mr. Weetman's gun and a
few cartridges, saying: "Just shoot me a couple of rabbits over in the
warren when you get time." At the end of the day Mr. Sampson had not
succeeded in killing a rabbit, so he kept the gun and the cartridges
many more days. Phemy was really happy. The gloom of the farm had
disappeared. The farm and everything about it looked beautiful,
beautiful indeed with its yard full of ricks, the pond full of ducks,
the fields full of sheep and cattle, and the trees still full of leaves
and birds. She flung maize about the yard; the hens scampered towards
it and the young pigs galloped, quarrelling over the grains which they
groped and snuffled for, grinding each one separately in their iron
jaws, while the white pullets stalked delicately among them, picked
up the maize seeds--one, two, three--and swallowed them like ladies.
Sometimes on cold mornings she would go outside and give an apple to
the fat bay pony when he galloped back from the station. He would stand
puffing with a kind of rapture, the wind from his nostrils discharging
in the frosty air vague shapes like smoky trumpets. Presently, upon
his hide, a little ball of liquid mysteriously suspired, grew, slid,
dropped from his flanks into the road. And then drops would begin to
come from all parts of him until the road beneath was dabbled by a
shower from his dew-distilling outline. Phemy would say:
"The wretches! They were so late they drove him near distracted, poor
thing. Lazy rogues, but wait till master comes back, they'd better be
careful!"
And if any friendly person in the village asked her, "How are you
getting on up there, Phemy?" she would reply, "Oh, as well as you
can expect with so much to be done--and such men!" The interlocutor
might hint that there was no occasion in the circumstances to distress
oneself, but then Phemy would be vexed. To her, honesty was as holy
as the Sabbath to a little child. Behind her back they jested about
her foolishness; but, after all, wisdom isn't a process, it's a
result, it's the fruit of the tree. One can't be wise, one can only be
fortunate.
On the last day of her elysium the workhouse master and the chaplain
had stalked over the farm, shooting partridges. In the afternoon she
met them and asked for a couple of birds for Weetman's return on
the morrow. The workhouse was not far away, it was on a hill facing
west, and at sunset-time its windows would often catch the glare
so powerfully that the whole building seemed to burn like a box of
contained and smokeless fire. Very beautiful it looked to Phemy.
2
The men had come to work punctually, and Phemy herself found so much
to do that she had no time to give the pony an apple. She cleared the
kitchen once and for all of the pails, guns, harness, and implements
that so hampered its domestic intention, and there were abundant signs
elsewhere of a new impulse at work in the establishment. She did not
know at what hour to expect the prisoner, so she often went to the
garden-gate and glanced up the road. The night had been wild with
windy rain, but morn was sparklingly clear though breezy still. Crisp
leaves rustled along the road where the polished chestnuts beside the
parted husks lay in numbers, mixed with coral buds of the yews. The
sycamore leaves were black rags, but the delicate elm foliage fluttered
down like yellow stars. There was a brown field neatly adorned with
white coned heaps of turnips, behind it a small upland of deeply green
lucerne, behind that nothing but blue sky and rolling cloud. The
turnips, washed by the rain, were creamy polished globes.
When at last he appeared she scarcely knew him. Glas Weetman was a big,
though not fleshy, man of thirty, with a large boyish face and a flat
bald head. Now he had a thick dark beard. He was hungry, but his first
desire was to be shaved. He stood before the kitchen mirror, first
clipping the beard away with scissors, and as he lathered the remainder
he said:
"Well, it's a bad state of things, this--my sister dead and my mother
gone to America. What shall us do?"
He perceived in the glass that she was smiling.
"There's nought funny in it, my comic gal!" he bawled indignantly.
"What are you laughing at?"
"I wer'n't laughing. It's your mother that's dead."
"My mother that's dead, I know."
"And Miss Alice that's gone to America."
"To America, I know, I know, so you can stop making your bullock's eyes
and get me something to eat. What's been going on here?"
She gave him an outline of affairs. He looked at her sternly when he
asked her about his sweetheart.
"Has Rosa Beauchamp been along here?"
"No," said Phemy, and he was silent. She was surprised at the question.
The Beauchamps were such respectable high-up people that to Phemy's
simple mind they could not possibly favour an alliance now with a man
that had been in prison; it was absurd, but she did not say so to him.
And she was bewildered to find that her conviction was wrong, for Rosa
came along later in the day and everything between her master and his
sweetheart was just as before; Phemy had not divined so much love and
forgiveness in high-up people.
It was the same with everything else. The old harsh rushing life was
resumed, Weetman turned to his farm with an accelerated vigour to make
up for lost time, and the girl's golden week or two of ease became an
unforgotten dream. The pails, the guns, the harness crept back into
the kitchen. Spiders, cockroaches, and mice were more noticeable than
ever before, and Weetman himself seemed embittered, harsher. Time alone
could never still him, there was a force in his frame, a buzzing in his
blood. But there was a difference between them now; Phemy no longer
feared him. She obeyed him, it is true, with eagerness, she worked in
the house like a woman and in the fields like a man. They ate their
meals together, and from this dissonant comradeship the girl, in a dumb
kind of way, began to love him.
One April evening, on coming in from the fields, he found her lying
on the couch beneath the window, dead plumb fast asleep, with no meal
ready at all. He flung his bundle of harness to the flags and bawled
angrily to her. To his surprise she did not stir. He was somewhat
abashed; he stepped over to look at her. She was lying on her side.
There was a large rent in her bodice between sleeve and shoulder; her
flesh looked soft and agreeable to him. Her shoes had slipped off to
the floor; her lips were folded in a pout.
"Why, she's quite a pretty cob," he murmured. "She's all right, she's
just tired, the Lord above knows what for."
But he could not rouse the sluggard. Then a fancy moved him to lift her
in his arms; he carried her from the kitchen and, staggering up the
stairs, laid the sleeping girl on her own bed. He then went downstairs
and ate pie and drank beer in the candlelight, guffawing once or twice:
"A pretty cob, rather." As he stretched himself after the meal a new
notion amused him: he put a plateful of food upon a tray, together with
a mug of beer and the candle. Doffing his heavy boots and leggings, he
carried the tray into Phemy's room. And he stopped there.
3
The new circumstance that thus slipped into her life did not effect any
noticeable alteration of its general contour and progress. Weetman did
not change towards her. Phemy accepted his mastership not alone because
she loved him, but because her powerful sense of loyalty covered
all the possible opprobrium. She did not seem to mind his continued
relations with Rosa.
Towards midsummer one evening Glastonbury came in in the late dusk.
Phemy was there in the darkened kitchen. "Master!" she said immediately
he entered. He stopped before her. She continued: "Something's
happened."
"Huh, while the world goes popping round something shall always happen!"
"It's me--I'm took--a baby, master," she said. He stood chock-still.
His back was to the light, she could not see the expression on his
face, perhaps he wanted to embrace her.
"Let's have a light, sharp," he said in his brusque way. "The supper
smells good, but I can't see what I'm smelling, and I can only fancy
what I be looking at."
She lit the candles and they ate supper in silence. Afterwards he sat
away from the table with his legs outstretched and crossed, hands sunk
into pockets, pondering while the girl cleared the table. Soon he put
his powerful arm around her waist and drew her to sit on his knees.
"Are ye sure o' that?" he demanded.
She was sure.
"Quite?"
She was quite sure.
"Ah, well, then," he sighed conclusively, "we'll be married!"
The girl sprang to her feet. "No, no, no! How can you be married? You
don't mean that--not married--there's Miss Beauchamp!" She paused and
added a little unsteadily, "She's your true love, master."
"Ay, but I'll not wed her!" he cried sternly. "If there's no gainsaying
this that's come on you I'll stand to my guns. It's right and proper
for we to have a marriage."
His great thick-fingered hands rested upon his knees; the candles threw
a wash of light upon his polished leggings; he stared into the fireless
grate.
"But we do not want to do that," said the girl dully and doubtfully.
"You have given your ring to her, you've given her your word. I don't
want you to do this for me. It's all right, master, it's all right."
"Are ye daft?" he cried. "I tell you we'll wed. Don't keep clacking
about Rosa--I'll stand to my guns." He paused before adding, "She'd
gimme the rightabout, fine now--don't you see, stupid--but I'll not
give her the chance."
Her eyes were lowered. "She's your true love, master."
"What would become of you and your child? Ye couldn't bide here!"
"No," said the trembling girl.
"I'm telling you what we must do, modest and proper; there's naught
else to be done, and I'm middling glad of it, I am. Life's a see-saw
affair. I'm middling glad of this."
So, soon, without a warning to anyone, least of all to Rosa Beauchamp,
they were married by the registrar. The change in her domestic status
produced no other change; in marrying Weetman she but married all
his ardour, she was swept into its current. She helped to milk cows,
she boiled nauseating messes for pigs, chopped mangolds, mixed meal,
and sometimes drove a harrow in his windy fields. Though they slept
together, she was still his servant. Sometimes he called her his
"pretty little cob," and then she knew he was fond of her. But in
general his custom was disillusioning. His way with her was his way
with his beasts; he knew what he wanted, it was easy to get. If for a
brief space a little romantic flower began to bud in her breast it was
frozen as a bud, and the vague longing disappeared at length from her
eyes. And she became aware that Rosa Beauchamp was not yet done with;
somewhere in the darkness of the fields Glastonbury still met her.
Phemy did not mind.
In the new year she bore him a son that died as it came to life. Glas
was angry at that, as angry as if he had lost a horse. He felt that he
had been duped, that the marriage had been a stupid sacrifice, and in
this he was savagely supported by Rosa. And yet Phemy did not mind; the
farm had got its grip upon her, it was consuming her body and blood.
Weetman was just going to drive into town; he sat fuming in the trap
behind the fat bay pony.
"Bring me that whip from the passage!" he shouted. "There's never a dam
thing handy!"
Phemy appeared with the whip. "Take me with you," she said.
"God-a-mighty! What for? I becomen back in an hour. They ducks want
looking over, and you've all the taties to grade."
She stared at him irresolutely.
"And whose to look after the house? You know it won't lock up--the
key's lost. Get up there!"
He cracked his whip in the air as the pony dashed away.
In the summer Phemy fell sick, her arm swelled enormously. The doctor
came again and again. It was blood-poisoning, caught from a diseased
cow that she had milked with a cut finger. A nurse arrived, but Phemy
knew she was doomed, and though tortured with pain she was for once
vexed and protestant. For it was a June night, soft and nubile, with
a marvellous moon; a nightingale threw its impetuous garland into the
air. She lay listening to it and thinking with sad pleasure of the time
when Glastonbury was in prison, how grand she was in her solitude,
ordering everything for the best and working superbly. She wanted to go
on and on for evermore, though she knew she had never known peace in
maidenhood or marriage. The troubled waters of the world never ceased
to flow; in the night there was no rest--only darkness. Nothing could
emerge now. She was leaving it all to Rosa Beauchamp. Glastonbury was
gone out somewhere--perhaps to meet Rosa in the fields. There was the
nightingale, and it was very bright outside.
"Nurse," moaned the dying girl, "what was I born into the world at all
for?"
CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN
CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN
Miss Smith, Clorinda Smith, desired not to die on a wet day. Her
speculations on the possibilities of one's demise were quite ingenuous
and had their mirth, but she shrunk from that figure of her dim
little soul--and it was only dimly that she could figure it at
all--approaching the pathways of the Boundless in a damp, bedraggled
condition.
"But the rain couldn't harm your spirit," declared her comforting
friends.
"Why not?" asked Clorinda, "if there is a ghost of me, why not a ghost
of the rain?"
There were other aspects, delectable and illusive, of this imagined
apotheosis, but Clorinda always hoped--against hope be it said--that it
wouldn't be wet. On three evenings there had been a bow in the sky, and
on the day she died rain poured in fury. With a golden key she unlocked
the life out of her bosom and moved away without fear, as if a great
light had sprung suddenly under her feet in a little dark place, into a
region where things became starkly real and one seemed to live like the
beams rolling on the tasselled corn in windy acres. There was calmness
in those translucent leagues and the undulation amid a vast implacable
light until she drifted, like a feather fallen from an unguessed star,
into a place which was extraordinarily like the noon-day world, so
green and warm was its valley.
A little combe lay between some low hills of turf, and on a green bank
beside a few large rocks was a man mending a ladder of white new-shaven
willow studded with large brass nails, mending it with hard knocks that
sounded clearly. The horizon was terraced only just beyond and above
him, for the hills rolled steeply up. Thin pads of wool hung in the
arch of the ultimate heavens, but towards the end of the valley the
horizon was crowded with clouds torn and disbattled. Two cows, a cow
of white and a cow of tan, squatted where one low hill held up, as it
were, the sunken limits of the sky. There were larks--in such places
the lark sings for ever--and thrushes--the wind vaguely active--seven
white ducks--a farm. Each nook was a flounce of blooms and a bower for
birds. Passing close to the man--he was sad and preoccupied, dressed in
a little blue tunic--she touched his arm as if to enquire a direction,
saying "Jacob!"
She did not know what she would have asked of him, but he gave her no
heed and she again called to him "Jacob!" He did not seem even to see
her, so she went to the large white gates at the end of the valley
and approached a railway crossing. She had to wait a long time, for
trains of a vastness and grandeur were passing without sound. Strange
advertisements on the hoardings and curious direction posts gathered
some of her attention. She observed that in every possible situation,
on any available post or stone, people had carved initials, sometimes a
whole name, often with a date, and Clorinda experienced a doubt of the
genuineness of some of these, so remote was the antiquity implied. At
last the trains were all gone by, and as the barriers swung back she
crossed the permanent way.
There was neither ambiguity in her movements nor surprise in her
apprehensions. She just crossed over to a group of twenty or thirty men
who moved to welcome her. They were barelegged, sandal-footed, lightly
clad in beautiful loose tunics of peacock and cinnamon, which bore not
so much the significance of colour as the quality of light. One of
them rushed eagerly forward, crying "Clorinda!" offering to her a long
coloured scarf. Strangely, as he came closer, he grew less perceivable;
Clorinda was aware in a flash that she was viewing him by some other
mechanism than that of her two eyes. In a moment he utterly disappeared
and she felt herself rapt into his being, caressed with faint caresses,
and troubled with dim faded ecstacies and recognitions not wholly
agreeable. The other men stood grouped around them, glancing with
half-closed cynical eyes. Those who stood farthest away were more
clearly seen: in contiguity a presence could only be divined, resting
only--but how admirably!--in the nurture of one's mind.
"What is it?" Clorinda asked: and all the voices replied, "Yes, we know
you!"
She felt herself released, and the figure of the man rejoined the
waiting group. "I was your husband Reuben," said the first man
slowly, and Clorinda, who had been a virgin throughout her short
life, exclaimed "Yes, yes, dear Reuben!" with momentary tremors
and a queer fugitive drift of doubt. She stood there, a spook of
comprehending being, and all the uncharted reefs in the map of her mind
were anxiously engaging her. For a time she was absorbed by this new
knowledge.
Then another voice spoke:
"I was your husband Raphael!"
"I know, I know," said Clorinda, turning to the speaker, "we lived in
Judæa."
"And we dwelt in the valley of the Nile," said another, "in the years
that are gone."
"And I too ... and I too ... and I too," they all clamoured, turning
angrily upon themselves.
Clorinda pulled the strange scarf from her shoulders where Reuben had
left it, and, handling it so, she became aware of her many fugitive
sojournings upon the earth. It seemed that all of her past had become
knit in the scarf into a compact pattern of beauty and ugliness of
which she was entirely aware, all its multiplexity being immediately
resolved ... the habitations with cave men, and the lesser human unit
of the lesser later day, Patagonian, Indian, Cossack, Polynesian, Jew
... of such stuff the pattern was intimately woven, and there were
little plangent perfect moments of the past that fell into order in
the web. Clorinda watching the great seabird with pink feet louting
above the billows that roared upon Iceland, or Clorinda hanging her
girdle upon the ebony hooks of the image of Tanteelee. She had taken
voyaging drafts upon the whole world, cataract, jungle and desert,
ingle and pool and strand, ringing the changes upon a whole gamut of
masculine endeavour ... from a prophet to a haberdasher. She could feel
each little life hung now as in a sarsnet of cameos upon her visible
breasts: thereby for these ... these _men_ ... she was draped in an
eternal wonder. But she could not recall any image of her past life in
_these_ realms, save only that her scarf was given back to her on every
return by a man of these men.
She could remember with humility her transient passions for them all.
None, not one, had ever given her the measure of her own desire, a
strong harsh flame that fashioned and tempered its own body; nothing
but a nebulous glow that was riven into embers before its beam had
sweetened into pride. She had gone from them childless always and much
as a little child.
From the crowd of quarrelling ghosts a new figure detached itself,
and in its approach it subdued that vague vanishing which had been
so perplexing to Clorinda. Out of the crowd it slipped, and loomed
lovingly beside her, took up her thought and the interrogation that
came into her mind.
"No," it said gravely, "there is none greater than these. The ultimate
reaches of man's mind produce nothing but images of men."
"But," said Clorinda, "do you mean that our ideals, previsions of a
vita-nuova...."
"Just so," it continued, "a mere intoxication. Even here you cannot
escape the singular dower of dreams ... you can be drunk with dreams
more easily and more permanently than with drugs."
The group of husbands had ceased their quarrelling to listen; Clorinda
swept them with her glances thoughtfully and doubtfully.
"Could mankind be so poor," the angel resumed, "as poor as these, if it
housed something greater than itself?"
With a groan the group of outworn husbands drew away. Clorinda turned
to her companion with disappointment and some dismay ... "I hardly
understand yet ... is this all then just...."
"Yes," it replied, "just the ghost of the world."
She turned unhappily and looked back across the gateway into the fair
combe with its cattle, its fine grass, and the man working diligently
therein. A sense of bleak loneliness began to possess her; here,
then, was no difference save that there were no correlations, no
consequences; nothing had any effect except to produce the ghost of a
ghost. There was already in the hinterland of her apprehensions a ghost
of her new ghostship: she was to be followed by herself, pursued by
figures of her own ceaseless being!
She looked at the one by her side: "Who are you?" she asked, and at the
question the group of men drew again very close to them.
"I am your unrealised desires," it said: "Did you think that the
dignity of virginhood, rarely and deliberately chosen, could be so
brief and barren? Why, that pure idea was my own immaculate birth, and
I was born, the living mate of you."
The hungry-eyed men shouted with laughter.
"Go away!" screamed Clorinda to them; "I do not want you."
Although they went she could hear the echoes of their sneering as she
took the arm of her new lover. "Let us go" she said, pointing to the
man in the combe, "and speak to him." As they approached the man he
lifted his ladder hugely in the air and dashed it to the ground so
passionately that it broke.
"Angry man! angry man!" mocked Clorinda. He turned towards her
fiercely. Clorinda began to fear him; the muscles and knots of his
limbs were uncouth like the gnarl of old trees; she made a little
pretence of no more observing him.
"Now what is it like," said she jocularly to the angel at her side, and
speaking of her old home, "what is it like now at Weston-super-Mare?"
At that foolish question the man with the ladder reached forth an ugly
hand and twitched the scarf from her shoulders.
It cannot now be told to what remoteness she had come, or on what roads
her undirected feet had travelled there, but certain it is that in
that moment she was gone.... Why, where or how cannot be established:
whether she was swung in a blast of annihilation into the uttermost
gulfs, or withdrawn for her beauty into that mysterious Nox; into some
passionate communion with the eternal husbands, or into some eternal
combat with their passionate other wives ... from our scrutiny at least
she passed for ever.
It is true there was a beautiful woman of this name who lay for a
month in a deep trance in the West of England. On her recovery she
was balladed about in the newspapers and upon the halls for quite a
time, and indeed her notoriety brought requests for her autograph from
all parts of the world, and an offer of marriage from a Quaker potato
merchant. But she tenderly refused him and became one of those faded
grey old maids who wear their virginity like antiquated armour.
THE CHERRY TREE
THE CHERRY TREE
There was uproar somewhere among the backyards of Australia Street. It
was so alarming that people at their midday meal sat still and stared
at one another. A fortnight before murder had been done in the street,
in broad daylight, with a chopper; people were nervous. An upper window
was thrown open and a startled and startling head exposed.
"It's that young devil, Johnny Flynn, again! Killing rats!" shouted
Mrs. Knatchbole, shaking her fist towards the Flynn's backyard. Mrs.
Knatchbole was ugly; she had a goitred neck and a sharp skinny nose
with an orb shining at its end, constant as grief.
"You wait, my boy, till your mother comes home, you just wait!" invited
this apparition, but Johnny was gazing sickly at the body of a big rat
slaughtered by the dogs of his friend George. The uproar was caused by
the quarrelling of the dogs, possibly for honours, but more probably,
as is the custom of victors, for loot.
"Bob down!" warned George, but Johnny bobbed up to catch the full anger
of those baleful Knatchbole eyes. The urchin put his fingers promptly
to his nose.
"Look at that for eight years old!" screamed the lady. "Eight years old
'e is! As true as God's my maker I'll...."
The impending vow was stayed and blasted for ever, Mrs. Knatchbole
being taken with a fit of sneezing, whereupon the boys uttered some
derisive "Haw haws!"
So Mrs. Knatchbole met Mrs. Flynn that night as she came from work,
Mrs. Flynn being a widow who toiled daily and dreadfully at a laundry
and perforce left her children, except for their school hours, to their
own devices. The encounter was an emphatic one and the tired widow
promised to admonish her boy.
"But it's alright, Mrs. Knatchbole, he's going from me in a week, to
his uncle in London he is going, a person of wealth, and he'll be no
annoyance to ye then. I'm ashamed that he misbehaves but he's no bad
boy really."
At home his mother's remonstrances reduced Johnny to repentance and
silence; he felt base indeed; he wanted to do something great and
worthy at once to offset it all; he wished he had got some money, he'd
have gone and bought her a bottle of stout--he knew she liked stout.
"Why do ye vex people so, Johnny?" asked Mrs. Flynn wearily. "I work my
fingers to the bone for ye, week in and week out. Why can't ye behave
like Pomony?"
His sister was a year younger than him; her name was Mona, which
Johnny's elegant mind had disliked. One day he re-baptised her; Pomona
she became and Pomona she remained. The Flynns sat down to supper.
"Never mind about all that, mum," said the boy, kissing her as he
passed her chair, "talk to us about the cherry tree!" The cherry tree,
luxuriantly blooming, was the crown of the mother's memories of her
youth and her father's farm; around the myth of its wonderful blossoms
and fruit she could weave garlands of romance, and to her own mind, as
well as to the minds of her children, it became a heavenly symbol of
her old lost home, grand with acres and delightful with orchard and
full pantry. What wonder that in her humorous narration the joys were
multiplied and magnified until even Johnny was obliged to intervene.
"Look here, how many horses _did_ your father have, mum ... really,
though?" Mrs. Flynn became vague, cast a furtive glance at this son of
hers and then gulped with laughter until she recovered her ground with;
"Ah, but there _was_ a cherry tree!" It was a grand supper--actually
a polony and some potatoes. Johnny knew this was because he was going
away. Ever since it was known that he was to go to London they had been
having something special like this, or sheep's trotters, or a pig's
tail. Mother seemed to grow kinder and kinder to him. He wished he had
some money, he would like to buy her a bottle of stout--he knew she
liked stout.
Well, Johnny went away to live with his uncle, but alas he was only two
months in London before he was returned to his mother and Pomony. Uncle
was an engine-driver who disclosed to his astounded nephew a passion
for gardening. This was incomprehensible to Johnny Flynn. A great
roaring boiling locomotive was the grandest thing in the world. Johnny
had rides on it, so he knew. And it was easy for him to imagine that
every gardener cherished in the darkness of his disappointed soul an
unavailing passion for a steam engine, but how an engine-driver could
immerse himself in the mushiness of gardening was a baffling problem.
However, before he returned home he discovered one important thing from
his uncle's hobby, and he sent the information to his sister:
Dear Pomona,
Uncle Harry has got a alotment and grow veggutables. He says what
makes the mold is worms. You know we puled all the worms out off
our garden and chukked them over Miss Natchbols wall. Well you
better get some more quick a lot ask George to help you and I bring
som seeds home when I comes next week by the xcursion on Moms
birthday
Your sincerely brother
John Flynn
On mother's birthday Pomona met him at the station. She kissed him
shyly and explained that mother was going to have a half holiday to
celebrate the double occasion and would be home with them at dinner
time.
"Pomona, did you get them worms?"
Pomona was inclined to evade the topic of worms for the garden, but
fortunately her brother's enthusiasm for another gardening project
tempered the wind of his indignation. When they reached home he
unwrapped two parcels he had brought with him; he explained his scheme
to his sister; he led her into the garden. The Flynns' backyard, mostly
paved with bricks, was small, and so the enclosing walls, truculently
capped by chips of glass, although too low for privacy were yet too
high for the growth of any cherishable plant. Johnny had certainly
once reared a magnificent exhibit of two cowslips, but these had been
mysteriously destroyed by the Knatchbole cat. The dank little enclosure
was charged with sterility; nothing flourished there except a lot of
beetles and a dauntless evergreen bush, as tall as Johnny, displaying
a profusion of thick shiny leaves that you could split on your tongue
and make squeakers with. Pomona showed him how to do this and they then
busied themselves in the garden until the dinner siren warned them that
mother would be coming home. They hurried into the kitchen and Pomona
quickly spread the cloth and the plates of food upon the table, while
Johnny placed conspiciously in the centre, after laboriously extracting
the stopper with a fork and a hair-pin, a bottle of stout brought from
London. He had been much impressed by numberless advertisements upon
the hoardings respecting this attractive beverage. The children then
ran off to meet their mother and they all came home together with great
hilarity. Mrs. Flynn's attention having been immediately drawn to the
sinister decoration of her dining table, Pomona was requested to pour
out a glass of the nectar. Johnny handed this gravely to his parent,
saying:--
"Many happy returns of the day, Mrs. Flynn!"
"O, dear, dear!" gasped his mother merrily, "you drink first!"
"Excuse me, no, Mrs. Flynn," rejoined her son, "many happy returns of
the day!"
When the toast had been honoured Pomona and Johnny looked tremendously
at each other.
"Shall we?" exclaimed Pomona. "O yes," decided Johnny; "come on mum, in
the garden, something marvellous!"
She followed her children into that dull little den, and by happy
chance the sun shone grandly for the occasion. Behold the dauntless
evergreen bush had been stripped of its leaves and upon its blossomless
twigs the children had hung numerous couples of ripe cherries, white
and red and black.
"What do you think of it, mum?" they cried, snatching some of the
fruit and pressing it into her hands, "what do you think of it?"
"Beautiful!" replied Mrs. Flynn in a tremulous voice. The children
stared silently at their mother until she could bear it no longer. She
turned and went sobbing into the kitchen.
THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH
THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH
Since the earth began its twisting, or since very soon after it began,
there have been persons on it who perceived more or less early in
life that it was seldom possible to get something in return for quite
nothing, and that even if you did the delicate situation then arising
was attended often with at least as much personal danger as delight,
and generally with much more. Tom Toole knew all about it, so he was
not going to sell his own little white soul to the devil, though he was
sixty years of age and his soul, he expected, was shrivelled a bit now
like a dried fig. He had no faith in wishing Hats, or Magic Carpets,
or Herbs of Longevity, and he had not heard of the Philosopher's
Stone, but he had a belief in an Elixir, somewhere in the world, that
would make you young again. He had heard, too, of the Transmutation of
Metals; indeed, he had associated himself a great many years ago with
a Belfast brassfounder in the production of certain sovereigns. The
brassfounder perished under the rigours of his subsequent incarceration
in gaol, but Tom Toole had been not at all uncomfortable in the lunatic
asylum to which a compassionate retribution had assigned him. It was
in the asylum that he met the man from Kilsheelan who, if you could
believe him, really had got a 'touch' from the fairies and could turn
things he had no wish for into the things he would be wanting. The man
from Kilsheelan first discovered his gift, so he told Tom Toole, when
he caught a turtle dove one day and changed it into a sheep. Then he
turned the sheep into a latherpot just to make sure and it _was_ sure.
So he thought he would like to go to the land of the Ever Young which
is in the western country, but he did not know how he could get there
unless he went in a balloon. Sure, he sat down in his cabin and turned
the shaving-pot into a fine balloon, but the balloon was so large it
burst down his house and he was brought to the asylum. Well that was
clear enough to Tom Toole, and after he had got good advice from the
man from Kilsheelan it came into his mind one day to slip out of the
big gates of the asylum, and, believe me, since then he had walked
the roads of Munster singing his ballads, and searching for something
which was difficult to find, and that was his youth. For Tom Toole was
growing old, a little old creature he was growing, gay enough and a bit
of a philanderer still, but age is certain and puts the black teeth in
your mouth and the whiteness of water on your hair.
One time he met a strange little old quick-talking man who came to him;
he seemed just to bob up in front of him from the road itself.
"Ah, good day t'ye, and phwat part are ye fram?"
"I'm from beyant," said Tom Toole, nodding back to the Knockmealdown
Mountains where the good monks had lodged him for a night.
"Ah, God deliver ye, and indeed I don't want to know your business at
all but----but----where are ye going?"
Between his words he kept spitting, in six or seven little words there
would be at least one spit. There was yellow dust in the flaps of his
ears and neat bushes of hair in the holes. Cranks and wrinkles covered
his nose, and the skull of him was bare, but there was a good tuft on
his chin. Tom Toole looked at him straight and queer for he did not
admire the fierce expression of him, and there were smells of brimstone
on him like a farmer who had been dipping his ewes, and he almost
expected to see a couple of horns growing out of his brow.
"It's not meself does be knowing at all, good little man," said Tom
Toole to him, "and I might go to the fair of Cappoquin, or I might walk
on to Dungarvan, in the harbour now, to see will I buy a couple of
lobsters for me nice supper."
And he turned away to go off upon his road, but the little old man
followed and kept by his side, telling him of a misfortune he had
endured; a chaise of his, a little pony chaise, had been almost
destroyed, but the ruin was not so great, for a kind lady of his
acquaintance, a lady of his own denomination, had given him four pounds
one shilling and ninepence. "'Ah, not that I'm needing your money,
ma'am,' says I, 'but damage is damage,' I says, 'and it's not right,'
I says, 'that I should be at the harm of your coachman;" and there he
was spitting and going on like a clock spilling over its machinery when
he unexpectedly grasped Tom Toole by the hand, wished him Good day, and
Good luck, and that he might meet him again----
Tom Toole walked on for an hour and came to a cross roads, and there
was the same old man sitting in a neat little pony chaise smoking his
pipe.
"Where are ye going?" says he.
"Dungarvan," said Tom Toole.
"Jump in then," said the little old man, and they jogged along the road
conversing together; he was as sharp as an old goat.
"What is your aspiration?" he said, and Tom Toole told him.
"That's a good aspiration, indeed. I know what you're seeking Tom
Toole; let's get on now and there'll be tidings in it."
When Tom Toole and the little old man entered the public at Dungarvan
they met a gang of strong young fellows, mechanics and people to drive
the traction engines, for there was a circus in the town. Getting their
fill of porter, they were, and nice little white loaves; very decent
boys, but one of them a Scotchman with a large unrejoicing face, and
he had a hooky nose with tussocks of hair in the nostrils and the two
tails of hair to his moustache like an old Chinese man. Peter Mullane
was telling a tale, and there was a sad bit of a man from Bristol with
a sickness in his breast and a cough that would heave out the side of a
mountain. Peter Mullane waited while Tom Toole and his friend sat down
and then he proceeded with his tale.
"Away with ye! said the devil to Neal Carlin, and away he went to the
four corners of the world. And when he came to the first corner he saw
a place where the rivers do be rushing----"
"----the only dam thing that does rush then in this country,"
interrupted the Scotchman with a sneer.
"Shut your----" began the man from Bristol, but he was taken with the
cough, until his cheeks were scarlet and his eyes, fixed angrily upon
the Highland man, were strained to tear-drops. "Shut your----" he began
it again, but he was rent by a large and vexing spasm that rocked him,
while his friends looked at him and wondered would he be long for this
world. He recovered quite suddenly and exclaimed, "----dam face" to
that Highland man. And then Peter Mullane went on:
"I am not given to thinking," said he, "that the Lord would put a
country the like of Ireland in a wee corner of the world, and he
wanting the nook of it for thistles and the poor savages that devour
them. Well, Neal Carlin came to a place where the rivers do be
rushing----" he paused invitingly, "and he saw a little fairy creature
with fine tresses of hair sitting under a rowan tree."
"A rowan?" exclaimed the Highland man.
Peter nodded.
"A Scottish tree!" declared the other.
"O shut your----" began the little coughing man, but again his
conversation was broken, and by the time he had recovered from his
spasms the company was mute.
"If," said Peter Mullane, "you'd wish to observe the rowan in its pride
and beauty just clap your eye upon it in the Galtee Mountains. "How
would it thrive," I ask you, "in a place which was stiff with granite
and sloppy with haggis? And what would ye do, my clever man, what would
ye do, if ye met a sweet fairy woman----?"
"I'd kiss the Judy," said the Highland man spitting a great splash.
Peter Mullane gazed at him for a minute or two as if he did not love
him much.
"Neal Carlin was attracted by her, she was a sweet creature. 'Warm!'
says she to him with a friendly tone. 'Begod, ma'am, it is a hot
day,' he said, and thinks he, she is a likely person to give me my
aspiration. And sure enough when he sat down beside her she asked him,
'What is your aspiration, Neal Carlin?' and he said, 'Saving your
grace, ma'am, it is but to enjoy the world and to be easy in it.' 'That
is a good aspiration,' she said, and she gave him some secret advice.
He went home to his farm, Neal Carlin did, and he followed the advice,
and in a month or two he had grown very wealthy, and things were easy
with him. But still he was not satisfied, he had a greedy mind, and
his farm looked a drifty little place that was holding him down from
big things. So he was not satisfied though things were easy with him,
and one night before he went sleeping he made up his mind, 'It's too
small it is. I'll go away from it now and a farm twice as big I will
have, three times as big, yes, I will have it ten times as big.' He
went sleeping on the wildness of his avarice, and when he rolled off
the settle in the morning and stood up to stretch his limbs he hit
his head a wallop against the rafter. He cursed it and had a kind of
thought that the place had got smaller. As he went from the door he
struck his brow against the lintel hard enough to beat down the house.
What is come to me, he roared in his pains; and looking into his field
there were his five cows and his bullock no bigger than sheep--will
ye believe that, then--and his score of ewes no bigger than rabbits,
mind it now, and it was not all, for the very jackdaws were no bigger
than chafers and the neat little wood was no more account than a grove
of raspberry bushes. Away he goes to the surgeon's to have drops put
in his eyes for he feared the blindness was coming on him, but on his
return there was his bullock no bigger than an old boot, and his cabin
had wasted to the size of a bird-cage."
Peter leaned forward, for the boys were quiet, and consumed a deal of
porter. And the Highland man asked him, "Well, what happened!"
"Oh, he just went up to his cabin and kicked it over the hedge as you
might an old can, and then he strolled off to another corner of the
world, Neal Carlin did, whistling 'The Lanty Girl.'"
Tom Toole's friend spoke to Peter Mullane. "Did ye say it was in the
Galtee Mountains that the young fellow met the lady?"
"In the Galtee Mountains," said Peter.
"To the Galtee Mountains let us be going, Tom Toole," cried the little
old man, "Come on now, there'll be tidings in it!"
So off they drove, and when they had driven a day and slept a couple of
nights they were there, and they came to a place where the rivers do be
rushing, and there was a rowan tree, but no lady on it.
"What will we do now, Tom Toole," says the old man.
"We'll not stint it," says he, and they searched by night and by day
looking for a person who would give them their youth again. They sold
the chaise for some guineas and the pony for a few more, and they
were walking among the hills for a thousand days, but never a dust of
fortune did they discover. Whenever they asked a person to guide them
they would be swearing at them or they would jeer.
"Well, may a good saint stretch your silly old skins for ye!" said one.