the green, fireworks! When the boy is put to bed we’ll walk that way.”
Mary expressed her pleasure but then declared she could not leave the
boy alone in his bed.
“He’ll not hurt, Mary, he has no fear in him. Give him the birthday
gift before we go. Whisht, he’s coming!”
The child, now clean and handsome, came to his chair and looked up at
his father sitting opposite to him.
“Holy Mother!” exclaimed the admiring parent, “it’s the neck of a swan
he has. Faylix Tincler, may ye live to be the father of a bishop!”
After tea his father took him up on the down for an hour. As they left
their doorway a group of the tidy but wretched orphans was marching
back into their seminary, little girls moving in double columns
behind a stiff-faced woman. They were all dressed alike in garments
of charity exact as pilchards. Grey capes, worsted stockings, straw
hats with blue bands round them, and hard boots. The boys were coming
in from a different direction, but all of them, even the minutest,
were clad in corduroy trousers and short jackets high throated like
a gaoler’s. This identity of garment was contrary to the will of God
for he had certainly made their pinched bodies diverse enough. Some
were short, some tall, dark, fair, some ugly, others handsome. The
sight of them made Felix unhappy, he shrank into himself, until he and
his father had slipped through a gap in a hedge and were going up the
hill that stretched smoothly and easily almost from their very door.
The top of the down here was quiet and lovely, but a great flank of
it two miles away was scattered over with tiny white figures playing
very deliberately at cricket. Pleasant it was up there in the calm
evening, and still bright, but the intervening valley was full of grey
ungracious houses, allotments, railway arches, churches, graveyards,
and schools. Worst of all was the dull forbidding aspect of the
Orphanage down beyond the roof of their own house.
They played with a ball and had some wrestling matches until the
declining day began to grow dim even on the hill and the fat jumbo
clouds over the town were turning pink. If those elephants fell on
him--what would they do? Why, they’d mix him up like ice-cream! So said
his father.
“Do things ever fall out of the sky?”
“Rain,” said Mr. Tincler.
“Yes, I know.”
“Stars--maybe.”
“Where do they go?”
“O they drop on the hills but ye can never find ’em.”
“Don’t Heaven ever?”
“What, drop down! no,” said Mr. Tincler, “it don’t. I have not heard
of it doing that, but maybe it all just stoops down sometimes, Faylix,
until it’s no higher than the crown of your hat. Let us be going home
now and ye’ll see something this night.”
“What is it?”
“Wait, Faylix, wait!”
As they crossed from the hill Mary drawing down the blinds signalled to
them from the window.
“Come along, Felix,” she cried, and the child ran into the darkened
room. Upon the table was set a little church of purest whiteness. Kevin
had bought it from an Italian hawker. It had a wonderful tall steeple
and a cord that came through a hole and pulled a bell inside. And
that was not all; the church was filled with light that was shining
through a number of tiny arched windows, blue, purple, green, violet,
the wonderful windows were everywhere. Felix was silent with wonder;
how could you get a light in a church that hadn’t got a door! then
Mary lifted the hollow building from the table; it had no floor, and
there was a night-light glowing in one of her patty-pans filled with
water. The church was taken up to bed with him in the small chamber
next his parents’ room and set upon a bureau. Kevin and Mary then went
off to the “bit of devilment” in the town gardens. Felix kept skipping
from his bed, first to gaze at the church, and then to lean out of the
window in his nightshirt, looking for the lamplighter who would come
to the street lamp outside. The house was the very last, and the lamp
was the very last lamp, on one of the roads that led from the town and
thence went poking out into the steady furze-covered downs. And as the
lamp was the very last to be lit darkness was always half-fallen by the
time the old man arrived at his journey’s end. He carried a pole with
a brass tube at one end. There were holes in the brass tube showing
gleams of light. The pole rested upon his shoulders as he trudged along
humming huskily.
“Here he is,” cried Felix, leaning from the window and waving a white
arm. The dull road, empty of traffic and dim as his mother’s pantry by
day, curved slightly, and away at the other end of the curve a jet of
light had sprung suddenly into the gloom like a bright flower bursting
its sheath; a black figure moved along towards him under the Orphanage
wall. Other lamps blossomed with light and the lamplighter, approaching
the Tinclers’ lamp, thrust the end of his pole into the lantern, his
head meanwhile craning back like the head of a horse that has been
pulled violently backwards. He deftly turned the tap; with a tiny dull
explosion that sounded like a doormat being beaten against the wall in
the next street the lamp was lit and the face of the old man sprang
into vague brilliance, for it was not yet utterly dark. Vague as the
light was, the neighbouring hills at once faded out of recognition and
became black bulks of oblivion.
“Oi.... Oi....” cried the child, clapping his hands. The old man’s
features relaxed, he grunted in relief, the pole slid down in his palm.
As the end of it struck the pavement a sharp knock he drew an old pipe
from his pocket and lit it quite easily although one of his hands was
deficient of a thumb and some fingers. He was about to travel back into
the sparkling town when Felix called to him:
“Soloman! Soloman!”
“Goo an to yer bed, my little billycock, or you’ll ketch a fever.”
“No, but what’s this?” Felix was pointing to the ground below him. The
old man peered over the iron railings into the front garden that had
just sufficient earth to cherish four deciduous bushes, two plants of
marigold, and some indeterminate herbs. In the dimness of their shadows
a glowworm beamed clearly.
“That?” exclaimed he. “O s’dripped off the moon, yas, right off, moon’s
wastin’ away, you’ll see later on if you’m watch out fer it, s’dripped
off the moon, right off.” Chuckling, he blew out the light at the end
of his pole, and went away, but turned at intervals to wave his hand
towards the sky, crying “Later on, right off!” and cackling genially
until he came to a tavern.
The child stared at the glowworm and then surveyed the sky, but the
tardy moon was deep behind the hills. He left the open window and
climbed into bed again. The house was empty, but he did not mind,
father and mother had gone to buy him another birthday gift. He did not
mind, the church glowed in its corner on the bureau, the street lamp
shined all over the ceiling and a little bit upon the wall where the
splendid picture of Wexford Harbour was hanging. It was not gloomy at
all although the Orphanage bell once sounded very piercingly. Sometimes
people would stroll by, but not often, and he would hear them mumbling
to each other. He would rather have a Chinese lantern first, and next
to that a little bagpipe, and next to that a cockatoo with a yellow
head, and then a Chinese lantern, and then.... He awoke; he thought he
heard a heavy bang on the door as if somebody had thrown a big stone.
But when he looked out of the window there was nobody to be seen. The
little moon drip was still lying in the dirt, the sky was softly black,
the stars were vivid, only the lamp dazzled his eyes and he could
not see any moon. But as he yawned he saw just over the down a rich
globe of light moving very gradually towards him, swaying and falling,
falling in the still air. To the child’s dazzled eyes the great globe,
dropping towards him as if it would crush the house, was shaped like an
elephant, a fat squat jumbo with a green trunk. Then to his relief it
fell suddenly from the sky right on to the down where he and father
had played. The light was extinguished and black night hid the deflated
fire-balloon.
He scrambled back into bed again but how he wished it was morning so
that he could go out and capture the old elephant--he knew he would
find it! When at last he slept he sank into a world of white churches
that waved their steeples like vast trunks, and danced with elephants
that had bellies full of fire and hidden bells that clanged impetuously
to a courageous pull of each tail. He did not wake again until morning
was bright and birds were singing. It was early but it was his
birthday. There were no noises in the street yet, and he could not hear
his father or mother moving about. He crawled silently from his bed and
dressed himself. The coloured windows in the little white fane gleamed
still, but it looked a little dull now. He took the cake that mother
always left at his bedside and crept down the stairs. There he put on
his shoes and, munching the cake, tiptoed to the front door. It was not
bolted but it was difficult for him to slip back the latch quietly,
and when at last it was done and he stood outside upon the step he was
doubly startled to hear a loud rapping on the knocker of a house a few
doors away. He sidled quickly but warily to the corner of the street,
crushing the cake into his pocket, and then peeped back. It was more
terrible than he had anticipated! A tall policeman stood outside that
house bawling to a woman with her hair in curl papers who was lifting
the sash of an upper window. Felix turned and ran through the gap in
the hedge and onwards up the hill. He did not wait; he thought he heard
the policeman calling out “Tincler!” and he ran faster and faster, then
slower and more slow as the down steepened, until he was able to sink
down breathless behind a clump of the furze, out of sight and out of
hearing. The policeman did not appear to be following him; he moved on
up the hill and through the soft smooth alleys of the furze until he
reached the top of the down, searching always for the white elephant
which he knew must be hidden close there and nowhere else, although
he had no clear idea in his mind of the appearance of his mysterious
quarry. Vain search, the elephant was shy or cunning and eluded him.
Hungry at last and tired he sat down and leaned against a large ant
hill close beside the thick and perfumed furze. Here he ate his cake
and then lolled, a little drowsy, looking at the few clouds in the
sky and listening to birds. A flock of rooks was moving in straggling
flight towards him, a wide flat changing skein, like a curtain of crape
that was being pulled and stretched delicately by invisible fingers.
One of the rooks flapped just over him; it had a small round hole
right through the feathers of one wing--what was that for? Felix was
just falling to sleep, it was so soft and comfortable there, when a
tiny noise, very tiny but sharp and mysterious, went “Ping!” just by
his ear, and something stung him lightly in the neck. He knelt up, a
little startled, but he peered steadily under the furze. “Ping!” went
something again and stung him in the ball of the eye. It made him
blink. He drew back; after staring silently at the furze he said very
softly “Come out!” Nothing came; he beckoned with his forefinger and
called aloud with friendliness “Come on, come out!” At that moment his
nose was almost touching a brown dry sheath of the furze bloom, and
right before his eyes the dried flower burst with the faint noise of
“Ping!” and he felt the shower of tiny black seeds shooting against
his cheek. At once he comprehended the charming mystery of the furze’s
dispersal of its seeds, and he submitted himself to the fairylike
bombardment with great glee, forgetting even the elephant until in one
of the furze alleys he came in sight of a heap of paper that fluttered
a little heavily. He went towards it; it was so large that he could
not make out its shape or meaning. It was a great white bag made of
paper, all crumpled and damp, with an arrangement of wire where the
hole was and some burned tow fixed in it. But at last he was able to
perceive the green trunk, and it also had pink eyes! He had found it
and he was triumphant! There were words in large black letters painted
upon it which he could not read, except one word which was CURE. It
was an advertisement fire-balloon relating to a specific for catarrh.
He rolled the elephant together carefully, and carrying the mass of
it clasped in his two arms he ran back along the hill chuckling to
himself, “I’m carrying the ole elephant.” Advancing down the hill to
his home he was precariously swathed in a drapery of balloon paper. The
door stood open; he walked into the kitchen. No one was in the kitchen
but there were sharp strange voices speaking in the room above. He
thought he must have come into the wrong house but the strange noises
frightened him into silence; he stood quite still listening to them.
He had dropped the balloon and it unfolded upon the floor, partly
revealing the astounding advertisement of
PEASEGOOD’S PODOPHYLLIN
The voices above were unravelling horror upon horror. He knew by some
divining instinct that tragedy was happening to him, had indeed already
enveloped and crushed him. A mortar had exploded at the fireworks
display, killing and wounding people that he knew.
“She had a great hole of a wound in the soft part of her thigh as you
could put a cokernut in....”
“God a mighty...!”
“Died in five minutes, poor thing.”
“And the husband ... they couldn’t...?”
“No, couldn’t identify ... they could not identify him ... only by some
papers in his pocket.”
“And he’d got a little bagpipe done up in a package ... for their
little boy....”
“Never spoke a word....”
“Never a word, poor creature.”
“May Christ be good to ’em.”
“Yes, yes,” they all said softly.
The child walked quietly up the stairs to his mother’s bedroom. Two
policemen were there making notes in their pocket books, their helmets
lying on the unused bed. There were also three or four friendly women
neighbours. As he entered the room the gossip ceased abruptly. One of
the women gasped “O Jesus!” and they seemed to huddle together eyeing
him as if he had stricken them with terror. With his fingers still upon
the handle of the door he looked up at the tallest policeman and said:
“What’s the matter?”
The policeman did not reply immediately; he folded up his notebook, but
the woman who had gasped came to him with a yearning cry and wrapped
him in her protesting arms with a thousand kisses.
“Ye poor lamb, ye poor little orphan, whatever ’ull become of ye!”
At that moment the bell of the Orphanage burst into a peal of harsh
impetuous clangour, and the policemen picked up their helmets from the
bed.
* * * * *
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 lather-pot 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 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 to just 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 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 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
there was a gang of strong young fellows, mechanics and people to drive
the traction engines, for there was a circus in it. Getting their fill
of porter, they were, and the 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 was gone 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 darn 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 teardrops. “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 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 very much, but then he continued:
“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 birdcage.”
Peter leaned forward, for the boys were quiet, and consumed a deal of
porter. And the Highland man asked him “Well, what happened?”
“O 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.’”