The remarkable thing about astonishment is that it can only last for an
instant. No person can be surprised for more than that time. You will
come to terms with a ghost within two minutes of its appearance, and it
had scarcely taken that time for Mac Cann and his daughter to become one
with the visitors.
If the surprisor and the surprisee are mutually astonished, then,
indeed, there is a tangle out of which anything may emerge, for two
explanations are necessary at the one moment, and two explanations can
no more hold the same position in time than two bodies can occupy the
same lodgment in space.
It needed alone that the angels should proclaim their quality for the
situation to arrange itself naturally.
Man is a scientific creature; he labels his ignorance and shelves it:
mystery affrights him, it bores him, but when he has given a name to any
appearance then mystery flies away, and reality alone remains for his
cogitation. Later, perhaps, reality will enrage and mystify him more
profoundly than any unexpectedness can do.
The Mac Canns, so far as they professed a religion, were Catholics.
Deeper than that they were Irish folk. From their cradles, if ever they
had cradles other than a mother's breast and shoulder, they had supped
on wonder. They believed as easily as an animal does, for most creatures
are forced to credit everything long before they are able to prove
anything. We have arranged to label these faculties of imagination and
prophecy among the lesser creatures Instinct, and with the label we have
thrown overboard more of mystery than we could afford to live with.
Later these may confront us again in our proper souls, and the wonder
and terror so long overdue will compel our tardy obeisance.
At the end of amazement, as of all else, we go to sleep, and, within an
hour of their meeting, the angels and the Mac Canns were stretched in
one common unconsciousness.
The angels were asleep, their attitudes proclaimed it. Patsy was asleep,
his nose, with the unpleasant emphasis of a cracked trumpet, pealed
wheezy confirmation of his slumber. His daughter was asleep, for there
by the brazier she lay, motionless as the ground itself.
Perhaps she was not asleep. Perhaps she was lying with her face to the
skies, staring through the darkness at the pale, scarce stars, dreaming
dreams and seeing visions, while, all around, down the invisible road
and across the vanished fields and the hills, night trailed her dusky
robes and crushed abroad her poppy.
Whether she had slept or not she was the first to arise in the morning.
A pale twilight was creeping over the earth, and through it one could
see chilly trees and shivering grass; the heavy clouds huddled together
as though they were seeking warmth on those grisly heights; the birds
had not yet left their nests; it was an hour of utter silence and
uncomeliness; an hour for blind and despairing creatures to move forward
spitefully, cursing themselves and the powers; an hour when imagination
has no function, and hope would fly again to the darkness rather than
remain in that livid wilderness, for this was not yet the thin child of
the dawn, crowned with young buds and active as a wintry leaf; it was
the abortion of the dawn, formless, heavy, and detestable.
Moving cautiously in that shade, Mary herself seemed no more than a
shadow; she diminished thin and formless as a wraith, while she trod
carefully to and fro from the cart to the hedge.
She sat down, unloosed her hair and commenced to brush it.
In this colourless light her hair had no colour, but was of astonishing
length and thickness; it flowed about her like a cloak, and as she sat
it rolled and crept on the grass. She did not often tend her hair thus.
Sometimes she plaited it for the sake of convenience, so that windy days
would not whip it into her eyes or lash her cheeks; sometimes, through
sheer laziness, she did not even plait it, she rolled it into a great
ball and drew a wide, masculine cap over its brightness; and now, before
the day had broken, sitting in a ghastly lightness, which was neither
light nor darkness, she was attending to her hair.
And this hair perplexed her, for she did not know what to do with it;
she did not know whether it was to be seen or not seen; whether to braid
it in two great ropes, or roll it carelessly or carefully above her
head, or let it hang loosely about her shoulders held only at the nape
with a piece of ribbon or stuff. An hesitation such as this was new to
her; she had never had occasion for such forethought; it was strange and
inquieting; more disturbing, indeed, than the visit at black of night of
those tall strangers whose eyes and voices were so quiet, and whose
appointments flashed in the firelight while they spoke to her father of
the things in which travellers are interested.
She looked at them where they lay, but they were scarcely more than
visible--a tangle of flowing cloths and great limbs fading away in the
rank grasses and the obscurity, and to her mind the real wonder was not
that they had come, but that they were still there, and that they were
sleeping deeply and peacefully as she had slept so often, with her head
pillowed on her arm and her limbs folded calmly between the earth and
the sky.